European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Wednesday that Europe's race to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines must accelerate to keep pace with scientific achievements and anticipate mutated versions of the virus.

"We underestimated the difficulty associated with mass production. Normally it takes five to ten years to produce a new vaccine. We did it within 10 months. This is a tremendous scientific success, and we should be really proud of that. But in some way, science is outpacing the industry," she told the European Parliament.

In her first public confession to Europeans, with the exception of some interviews with specific media, von der Leyen said that her commission had made a mistake in purchasing vaccines for all European Union countries.

But it defended the strategy as a whole.

"We were late in licensing. We were overly optimistic when it came to mass production. Perhaps we were overly confident that our orders would actually be delivered on time," she said.

But allowing the richest European countries to monopolize vaccines for themselves and not others "would, if it happened, be the end of our society."

There are lessons to be used, according to von den Leyen, and her commission will take care of that.

These include providing more data shared by clinics in European Union countries, and improving controls to allow the European Medicines Agency to move more quickly in licensing vaccines, especially removing industrial obstacles to vaccine production.

"The sector has to adapt to the speed of science," she said, noting that vaccines can contain up to 400 ingredients, while manufacturing can bring together up to 100 companies.

And she confirmed that a team was assigned to produce the vaccine, led by Commissioner of Internal Markets Thierry Broughton, that task.

"We are dealing with new vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, which were not produced on this scale before," she said.

Von der Leyen warned that European scientists do not yet know if vaccines are effective against new mutated versions of the virus beginning to appear.

"We do not know if these mutations will continue to emerge. We know that we have to wait and prepare immediately," she said.