AMSTERDAM– The European Union’s drug regulator said on Friday that coronavirus vaccine documents stolen from its servers in a cyberattack were not only leaked to the Internet, but also “manipulated” by hackers.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) noted that an ongoing investigation into the theft showed that hackers obtained emails and November documents related to the evaluation of experimental vaccines for the virus. The agency, which regulates drugs and drugs on the block, had a wealth of confidential information about Covid-19 as part of its approval process.
“Part of the correspondence has been manipulated by the perpetrators prior to publication in a way that could undermine confidence in vaccines,” the agency said.
He indicated that, given the devastating consequences of the pandemic, there is an “urgent need for public health to make vaccines available to EU citizens as soon as possible”. The agency insisted that despite this urgency, its decisions to recommend approval of inoculations were based “on the soundness of scientific evidence on the safety, efficacy and quality of a vaccine, and nothing more.”
Germany and other EU member states harshly criticized the Amsterdam-based agency in December for not approving vaccines against the virus more quickly. The EMA issued its first recommendation for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine weeks after it had already received the green light in Britain, the United States, Canada and other countries.
The European agency recommended a second vaccine, produced by Moderna, in the early days of this month. And it is currently evaluating a third, that of AstraZeneca and Oxford.
The EMA has indicated that police agencies are taking “necessary action” in response to the cyberattack.