Coronavirus Live News: Half of Americans Would Get Vaccinated, Survey Shows; second wave arrives in South Africa | World News

A survey by The Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center shows that about a quarter of American adults are not sure they want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. About another quarter say they won’t.

Many on the fence have security concerns and want to see how the initial launch unfolds, skepticism that could hamper the campaign against the scourge that has killed nearly 290,000 Americans. Experts estimate that at least 70% of the US population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or the point where enough people are protected for the virus to be kept under control.

Early data suggests that the two American pioneers, a vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech and another by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health, offer robust protection. The Food and Drug Administration is carefully studying the study’s results to make sure the vaccines are safe before deciding in the next few days whether to allow mass vaccines, as Britain began to do with Pfizer’s vaccines on Tuesday.

Despite the hopeful news, sentiments haven’t changed much from an AP-NORC poll in May, before it was clear a vaccine would work.

In the survey of 1,117 American adults conducted Dec. 3-7, about 3 in 10 said they are very or extremely confident that the first available vaccines will have been adequately tested for safety and efficacy. About an equal number said they are not confident. The rest fell somewhere in between.

Among those who do not want to be vaccinated, about 3 in 10 said they are not worried about getting seriously ill from the coronavirus, and about a quarter said the outbreak is not as serious as some people say.

About 7 in 10 of those who said they would not get vaccinated are concerned about side effects. Pfizer and Moderna say the tests have uncovered no serious problems so far. As with many vaccines, recipients may experience fever, fatigue, or pain in the arms from the injection, signs that the immune system is ramping up.

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

My name is Helen sullivan and I’ll bring you the latest from around the world for the next few hours.

In the US, a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center shows that about a quarter of US adults are unsure whether they want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. About another quarter say they won’t.

Meanwhile, South Africa has entered a second wave of the pandemic, the health minister declared on Wednesday.

“As it stands as a country, we now meet that criterion,” Zweli Mkhize said in a statement, as the country recorded nearly 7,000 new cases in the last 24-hour cycle.

The country now has 828,598 infections after 6,709 new cases were detected between Tuesday and Wednesday.

• Brazil reports the highest daily cases since mid-August. Brazil reported 53,453 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the highest daily rate since mid-August, and 836 deaths from Covid-19, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. The country has recorded 6,728,452 cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 178,995, according to ministry data, in the third-worst outbreak in the world outside of the United States and India.
• German biotech firm BioNTech said regulatory documents related to the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with Pfizer had been “illegally accessed” after a cyberattack on the European drug regulator. Previously, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is responsible for evaluating and approving medicines, medical devices and vaccines for the European Union, said it had been the target of a cyber attack. He did not elaborate.
• Marty Wilde will become one of the first celebrities to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. The 1950s pop star, best known for his hit Teenager in Love, will take the hit Thursday. The vaccines began to be administered in 70 hospitals throughout the United Kingdom from Tuesday, starting with health workers, people who live in nursing homes and the elderly.
• The rate of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Spain reaches the lowest level since August. The rate of confirmed coronavirus cases in Spain fell to 193 cases per 100,000 people on Wednesday to hit the lowest level recorded since August, data from the Health Ministry showed, Reuters reports. The ministry reported 9,773 infections since Monday, bringing the total to just over 1.7 million, while the death toll rose by 373 to 47,019.
• Slovakia ordered the closure of schools and most stores for at least three weeks starting on December 21. The Central European country also ordered outdoor seating in restaurants to end as of December 11, only allowing takeout as the number of boxes of COVID-19 continued to rise.
• The creators of the Sputnik V vaccine have denied that Russians should stop drinking for almost two months while taking the hits.. The scientists tried to avoid a public dispute over whether millions would have to be abstainers to join the country’s mass vaccination program. After a day of heated deliberation, the director of the Gamaleya research center that developed Sputnik V said patients should avoid drinking alone for six days.
• England’s chief medical officer has warned of a “disastrous” resurgence of coronavirus cases if people stop adhering to social distancing guidelines now that the mass vaccination program has begun. Professor Chris Whitty told MPs that the winter months were high risk for the NHS, particularly due to respiratory infections. He stressed the importance of immunizing some 20 million people and prioritized a jab before any substantial easing of restrictions.
• Canada becomes the third country to approve the Covid-19 vaccine. Canada approved its first Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday, clearing the way for doses from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE to be delivered and administered across the country, Reuters reports. Canada is the third country after the United Kingdom and Bahrain to give the green light to the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
• A study suggests that Covid-19 circulates in Italy at the end of November 2019.Covid-19 was circulating in Italy at the end of November 2019, three months before the first local transmission was detected, a new study showed, which was conducted on a swab taken from a four-year-old boy, who had respiratory problems and she was vomiting on November 30, 2019. The next day she developed a rash and the illness was mistaken for measles.
• Merkel angrily says the German death rate is “unacceptable”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the country’s residents could be proud of what they had accomplished and that there was now “light at the end of the tunnel.” He said that a creative and inquisitive spirit had led to various vaccines: “the best scientists in the world,” he said, “have shown us the qualities that people really have in them.”