EMILIO PARODI EUROPE's medicines regulator is planning to speed up assessments of any COVID-19 vaccines that are modified to protect against variants of the virus, the head of the agency's COVID-19 task-force told Reuters yesterday. Marco Cavaleri, chair of the vaccine evaluation team at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said there should be no need for lengthy large-scale trials like those needed to evaluate the first COVID-19 vaccines, since tweaks for new variants can be tested on smaller groups. "We are working on updated guidelines, assuming that we cannot ask for large Phase III trials. This will allow us to…