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BRUSSELS/COPENHAGEN, May 14-- As COVID-19 has made more than 1.8 million people sick and caused over 163,000 deaths in the European Region's 54 countries, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suggested on Thursday that a vaccine for COVID-19 could be ready in a year at the earliest. While there is a vaccine hope, there is also a vaccine controversy. France has cried foul after the country's pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said it would reserve first shipments of any COVID-19 vaccine for the United States. Also on Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe warned that the "emergency fatigue" would undermine the gains in fighting COVID-19 and that there was "no room for complacency." An online dashboard, maintained by the WHO European Region, showed that 1,803,789 confirmed COVID-19 cases had been reported in 54 countries in the Region, with 163,458 deaths as of 10:00 a.m. CET (0800 GMT) on Thursday. VACCINE HOPE & CONTROVERSY The Amsterdam-based EMA, an agency of the European Union (EU) responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines in the EU, said on Thursday that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus could be ready in a year under an "optimistic" scenario. "For vaccines, since the development has to start from scratch ... we might look from an optimistic side that in a year from now, so beginning of 2021," Marco Cavaleri, the EMA's head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy, told an online press briefing. | 
