The new coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, which began nearly a year ago, has infected more than 72 million people and killed 1.6 million so far, according to worldometer figures. Several governments around the world, in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, have carried out extensive work to develop vaccines that can eliminate this pandemic that originated in Wuhan in China from the world.
The United States, which has surpassed more than 16 million coronavirus cases, will begin rolling out the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech starting Monday morning. In the meantime, the UK vaccine regulator will review all the vaccine data trials conducted by Oxford and AstraZeneca.
Here are the latest updates on the development of the Covid-19 vaccine:
1. Brazil released its national vaccination plan on Saturday with the goal of vaccinating 51 million people in the first half of 2021. In a document presented to the Supreme Court that gave the government a deadline to prepare the plan, the Ministry Health said that 108 million doses will be available for priority vaccination of health workers, the elderly and those most vulnerable to the disease.
2. A senior US official told AFP news agency that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would reach hospitals and other sites across the country on Monday morning. Earlier, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Saturday that it had approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine by pilots and air traffic controllers. The country has exceeded 16 million cases of Covid-19, while the death toll stands at 305,082, according to Worldometer figures.
3. British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca said Saturday it would buy US biotech firm Alexion for $ 39 billion to boost its work in immunology. The Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca in collaboration with the University of Oxford, which is awaiting regulatory approvals, will be used for a “mix-and-match” trial with Russia’s Sputnik vaccine.
Four. In India, citizens with heart problems, diabetes and hypertension could receive doses of the Covid-19 vaccine as a priority, officials familiar with the development said, adding that there will be a door-to-door survey and government databases will be used to identify those people. .
5. The Maharashtra government is mobilizing to administer vaccine doses to more than 30 million people in three phases over a period of six months, officials stated adding that the vaccination campaign will be carried out in a systematic way and people will have They will need to register online and in addition they will be asked to be present at a vaccination camp on a specific date and time.
6. Peru suspended trials of China’s Sinopharm vaccine due to a “serious adverse” event that occurred with one of its volunteers chosen for the study, the government said Saturday. The Health Ministry added that the event was under investigation. Sinopharm is conducting trials with 12,000 volunteers in Peru and was about to complete the first stage in the next few days.
(With contributions from the agency)
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