Europe and pharma groups must work together to speed up Covid-19 vaccinations, the head of the European branch of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, expressing concern about the effectiveness of vaccines on virus variants.

“We have to be prepared” for new problematic mutations of the virus “by expanding countries' capacity for genomic sequencing”, WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told AFP in an interview.

In the European Union, just 2.5 percent of the population has received a first vaccine dose, though announcements by several laboratories of increased vaccine deliveries has raised hopes of an acceleration.

“We need to join up to speed up vaccinations [...] with otherwise competing pharmaceutical companies joining efforts to drastically increase production capacity [...] that's what we need,” he said.