China agreed to approve BioNTech SE’s COVID-19 vaccines for foreign residents, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in Beijing on Friday, in what would mark the first approval of an mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 for use in China, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Scholz and Chinese leader Xi Jinping also discussed a pathway for approving the BioNTech vaccine for the broader population in China, Mr. Scholz said in a news conference, suggesting that regulators at the European Medicines Agency would be involved.
“There will be an acceleration of the approval process; that’s been promised to me,” Mr. Scholz told German journalists in a question-and-answer session afterward. He said that Europe would speed up applications made by Chinese companies.