AMSTERDAM– The European Union’s drug regulator said on Friday that coronavirus vaccine documents stolen from its servers in a cyber attack were not only leaked online, but also “manipulated” by hackers.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said an ongoing investigation into the theft had shown that hackers had obtained emails and documents in November related to the evaluation of experimental virus vaccines. The agency, which regulates medicines and drugs in the block, had extensive confidential information about Covid-19 as part of the approval process.
“Part of the correspondence was manipulated by the perpetrators before publication in a way that could undermine confidence in vaccines,” the agency said.
He said that given the devastating consequences of the pandemic, there was 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 the approval of vaccinations were based on “the strength of scientific evidence on the safety, efficacy and quality of a vaccine and nothing else”.
Germany and other EU member states harshly criticized the Amsterdam-based agency in December for failing to approve vaccines against the virus more quickly. The EMA issued its first recommendation for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine a few weeks after it had already received the green light in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and other countries.
The European Agency recommended a second vaccine, produced by Moderna, in the first days of this month. And currently evaluating a third, that of AstraZeneca and Oxford.
The EMA indicated that law enforcement agencies are taking “necessary action” in response to the cyber attack.