15:56

The head of the European Union executive has said a German company might have a vaccine against coronavirus by the autumn.

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, released €80m (£71.7m) of EU funds to the German pharmaceutical company CureVac on Monday, after discussing with executives their vaccine plans. She said:

They are working on a patent that has already been approved and gone through the specific processes that are necessary, so they are highly specialised in this field. And it is their prediction that they might be able towards fall to have a vaccine that is fighting coronavirus.

German media reported that Donald Trump had tried to buy the company over the weekend, although the firm has distanced itself from those claims.

Von der Leyen said: “It is a European company. We wanted to keep it in Europe, it wanted to stay in Europe.” She said rules on approval of medical products would speed up “as we are in a severe crisis we all see that we are able to speed up many of the processes that are slow normally and take a lot of time”.

She was speaking in Brussels, after European leaders approved a 30-day ban on non-EU citizens travelling into the union, following crisis talks via conference call.

Von der Leyen said there was “a unanimous and united approach” on the travel restrictions, which include exemptions for British nationals, residents, healthcare workers and researchers, and people delivering goods across the EU internal markets.

She said it was up to EU member states to implement the plan “as soon as possible”.

Von der Leyen said her information was that the British government did not plan to join the EU in implementing the travel ban, while noting the British government was advising against foreign travel.

She hinted the EU would soon have to go further with plans to deal with the economic fallout of the virus.

This is an external shock and it hits the whole world. We have never had that before. The enemy is a virus and now we have to do our utmost to protect our people and to protect our economies.

The European council president, Charles Michel, said EU27 leaders would hold another conference call next week. Long planned face-to-face talks at an EU summit in Brussels at the end of the month have been cancelled.