EU Member States Meet to Discuss Drug Shortages During COVID-19

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on May 15, 2020 that the EU Executive Steering Group on Shortages of Medicines Caused by Major Events held a virtual meeting on May 13, 2020 to discuss actions taken by authorities in the European Union to ensure the availability of medicines in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting included heads of national competent authorities (NCAs) of the EU Member States.

The continued roll out of the i-SPOC system was discussed during the meeting. The system allows industry to notify EMA and EU Member States of current or anticipated shortages of drugs crucial to the pandemic. Improvement of the supply of drugs used in intensive care units (ICUs) was discussed due to reported shortages of ICU medicines. Participants discussed the development of joint principles for assessing demand at the national level. The sharing of demand data by the NCAs was determined to be useful to ensure supply of ICU medicines. Information on models currently in use by some Member States was shared, and ways of improving forecasting capacities and data modeling best practices were discussed.