A second COVID-19 vaccine won regulatory approval in Europe on Wednesday and the Netherlands belatedly launched its vaccination campaign as European countries accelerated a patchy drive to defeat the coronavirus pandemic.

Axar.az reports that the green light for Moderna Inc’s vaccine from the European Medicines Authority (EMA), and later the European Commission, was a big boost for European hopes of containing a disease that has infected more than 85 million people globally and killed nearly 1.9 million.

“With the Moderna vaccine, the second one now authorized in the EU, we will have further 160 million doses. And more vaccines will come,” said Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the European Union executive.

The EMA granted conditional marketing approval two weeks ago for a similar vaccine from U.S. company Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been given to hundreds of thousands of Europeans since roll-out began a week ago though the campaign has been uneven, with officials in Germany and France frustrated at the slow rate of progress.