Coronavirus dwell information: poorest international locations to get vaccine in weeks, says WHO; Brazil deaths move 200,000 | World information

The WHO granted emergency validation to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 31, paving the way for countries worldwide to give swift approval to its import and distribution, AFP reports.

According to the WHO’s overview of candidate vaccines, 63 have been tested on humans, 21 of which reached final-stage mass testing.

A further 172 candidate vaccines are being developed in laboratories with a view to eventual human trials.

“There is a really big pipeline of vaccines that are coming through,” said O’Brien.

“We are in active review of the data on other vaccines and we do expect to be emergency-use listing additional vaccines in the coming weeks and the next months.

“We have 15 manufacturers that have contacted us believing that they have the data that are required to meet these highest standards.”

As for the new mutations of the virus detected in Britain and South Africa, WHO experts have said that while they seem more transmissible, there is no indication that the current vaccines would not work against those variants – and the vaccines are easily adaptable in any case.

“The evaluation about whether the existing vaccines will be impacted at all is under way,” said O’Brien.

However, “the kinds of changes being seen in these variants are not felt to be likely to change the impact”, she added.

O’Brien said it was too early to tell how long protection would last for following vaccination, and the WHO had no data yet to make any recommendations on receiving doses of different vaccines, having fully reviewed only the Pfizer-BioNTech jab.

The world’s poorest countries can expect to start receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine doses between the end of January and mid-February, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

AFP: Vaccination is already under way in some of the world’s wealthiest nations, including the United States, Britain, European Union countries and Canada.

Covax, the globally-pooled vaccine procurement and distribution effort, has struck agreements to secure two billion doses – and the first of those will start rolling out within weeks, said the WHO’s head of vaccines, Kate O’Brien.

Covax aims to secure vaccines for 20 percent of the population in each participating country by the end of the year, with funding covered for the 92 lower- and lower-middle income economies involved in the scheme.

It is co-led by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

Asked how quickly lower-income African nations would get vaccines, O’Brien told a WHO live social media event: “The facility has access to over two billion doses of vaccine.

“We will start to deliver those vaccines probably by the end of January, and, if not, certainly by early February and mid-February.

“That’s how countries in Africa and South Asia, and other countries around the world of these 92 that are less able to afford vaccines, are actually going to get vaccines.”

Australia’s Queensland state enforced a three-day lockdown in the city of Brisbane from Friday evening, after a hotel quarantine worker tested positive for the more contagious variant of Covid-19 that emerged in Britain last month.

State premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters:

We know that this UK strain is highly infectious. It is 70% more infectious, and we are going to go hard and we are going to go early to do everything we can to stop the spread of this virus.”

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest global developments for the next few hours.

You can cause me to experience a small surge in dopamine by getting in touch with me on Twitter here.

The world’s poorest countries can expect to start receiving their first Covid-19 vaccine doses between the end of January and mid-February, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

Vaccination is already under way in some of the world’s wealthiest nations, including the United States, Britain, European Union countries and Canada.

Meanwhile Brazil passed 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic Thursday. That is the second highest total in the world.

The health ministry said the country had 1,524 deaths in the previous 24 hours, rising to a total of 200,498 for the pandemic.

• The UK said it will extend a ban on travellers entering England to southern African countries in a measure to prevent the spread of a new Covid-19 variant identified in South Africa. The restriction will go into effect on Saturday and remain in place for two weeks, the government said.
• France reported 21,703 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Thursday, down from 25,379 on Wednesday. The health ministry also reported 277 new virus deaths in hospitals compared to 283 on Wednesday.
• Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said supply agreements with Pfizer meant that all Israelis over the age of 16 would be able to be vaccinated by the end of March, or perhaps even earlier.
• Germany reported over 1,000 Covid-linked deaths. Health authorities registered 26,391 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, and 1070 deaths. But the government’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute, said the numbers remain skewed following underreporting over the Christmas break, and a true picture of where the virus is at in Germany won’t be clear until 17 January at the earliest.
• Europe has surpassed over 25m cases of Covid, according to Reuters analysis. Several countries are reinstating or extending lockdowns as a resurgence in the pandemic threatens to overwhelm health services.
• The UK recorded highest number of daily deaths since 21 April. The UK government said a further 1,162 people have died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Thursday. This is the highest daily reported total since 21 April when 1,224 were recorded. It brings the UK’s total number of deaths to 78,508. Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies for deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, together with additional data on deaths that have occurred in recent days, show there have now been 94,000 deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK.
• Japan declared a state of emergency for Tokyo area as Covid-19 cases surge. Japan has declared a one-month state of emergency in the capital, Tokyo, and in three neighbouring prefectures to stem the spread of coronavirus infections, as new daily cases surged to a record of more than 7,000, media reported.
• The WHO called for intensified measures over “alarming” virus variant. The World Health Organization’s European branch said more needs to be done to deal with the alarming situation brought on by a recently discovered variant of the coronavirus. WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, also urged safe flexibility on the time between the first and second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
• Russia’s official number of coronavirus deaths passed 60,000. Russia reported 23,541 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, which brought the total number of cases to 3,332,142.
• In the UK, Covid killed half of a Sussex care home’s residents over Christmas. A care home in East Sussex has been devastated by Covid,6losing half of all its residents to the disease over Christmas, fuelling fears the new, more transmissible virus variant sweeping the south-east of England is beginning to breach homes’ defences.
• France’s border with UK to remain closed ‘for foreseeable future’, said the prime minister, Jean Castex. So far 19 cases of the new fast-moving variant of the coronavirus, identified by scientists in the UK and called the “English variant” in France, have been identified. Castex said bars, restaurants and ski resorts would not be opening at the end of the month and it was too early to say if they would be able to reopen by mid-February.