UK first country to roll out AstraZeneca and Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine

Britain will become the first country to roll out the low cost and easily transportable AstraZeneca and Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, another step forward in the global response to the pandemic.
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Six hospitals in England will administer the first of around 530,000 doses Britain has ready. The programme will be expanded to hundreds of other British sites in the coming days, and the government hopes it will deliver tens of millions of doses within months.

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“This is a pivotal moment in our fight against this awful virus and I hope it provides renewed hope to everybody that the end of this pandemic is in sight,” health minister Matt Hancock said in a statement.

Last month Britain became the first country to use a different vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech , which has to be stored at very low temperatures. Britain has so far injected around one million people with it.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and can be stored at fridge temperature, which makes it easier to transport and use. India approved the vaccine on Sunday for emergency use.

While the government has been keen to hail its vaccination programme as the furthest advanced in the world, it has had to balance the optimism of that message and plead with the public to stick to rules to prevent new infections.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday that tougher restrictions were likely to be introduced, even with millions of citizens already living under the strictest tier of rules.

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The spread of the variant virus has also forced the government to change its approach to vaccination. Britain is now prioritising getting a first dose of a vaccine to as many people as possible over giving second doses. Delaying the distribution of second shots should help stretch the supply.

The change of strategy has drawn criticism from some British doctors.

Cases of Covid-19 in Britain have risen sharply in recent weeks, fuelled by a new and more transmissible variant of the virus. On Sunday there were nearly 55,000 new cases and in total more than 75,000 people in the country have died with Covid-19 during the pandemic – the second highest toll in Europe.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all but shut the door Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s push for $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks, declaring Congress has provided enough pandemic aid as he blocked another attempt by Democrats to force a vote.

The GOP leader made clear he is unwilling to budge, despite political pressure from Trump and even some fellow Republican senators demanding action. Trump wants the recent $600 in aid increased threefold. But McConnell dismissed the idea of bigger “survival checks” approved by the House, saying the money would go to plenty of American households that just don’t need it.

McConnell’s refusal to act means the additional relief Trump wanted is all but dead.

“We just approved almost a trillion dollars in aid a few days ago,” McConnell said, referring to the year-end package Trump signed into law.

McConnell added, “if specific, struggling households still need more help,” the Senate will consider “smart targeted aid. Not another firehose of borrowed money.”

The showdown between the outgoing president and his own Republican Party over the $2,000 checks has thrown Congress into a chaotic year-end session just days before new lawmakers are set to be sworn into office.

It’s one last standoff, together with the override of Trump’s veto of a sweeping defense bill, that will punctuate the president’s final days and deepen the GOP’s divide between its new wing of Trump-styled populists and what had been mainstay conservative views against government spending.

Trump has been berating the GOP leaders, and tweeted, “$2000 ASAP!”

President-elect Joe Biden also supports the payments and wants to build on what he calls a “downpayment” on relief.

“In this moment of historic crisis and untold economic pain for countless American families, the President-elect supports $2,000 direct payments as passed by the House,” said Biden transition spokesman Andrew Bates.

The roadblock set by Senate Republicans appears insurmountable. Most GOP senators seemed to accept the inaction even as a growing number of Republicans, including two senators in runoff elections on Jan. 5 in Georgia, agree with Trump’s demand, some wary of bucking him.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the $600 checks would begin to go out Wednesday. Congress had settled on smaller payments in a compromise over the big, year-end COVID relief and government funding bill that Trump reluctantly signed into law. Before signing, though, Trump demanded more.

For a second day in a row, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tried to force a vote on the bill approved by the House meeting Trump’s demand for the $2,000 checks.

“What we’re seeing right now is Leader McConnell trying to kill the checks — the $2,000 checks desperately needed by so many American families,” Schumer said.

With the Georgia Senate runoff elections days away, leading Republicans warned that the GOP’s refusal to provide more aid as the virus worsens could jeopardize the outcome of those races.

Georgia’s GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are trying to fend off Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in runoff elections that will determine which party has the Senate majority. The two Republicans announced support for Trump’s call for more generous checks.

“The Senate Republicans risk throwing away two seats and control of the Senate,” Newt Gingrich, the former congressional leader, said on Fox News.

McConnell has tried to shield his divided Republicans from a difficult vote. On Wednesday he suggested he had kept his word to start a “process” to address Trump’s demands, even if it means no votes will actually be taken.

“It’s no secret Republicans have a diversity of views,” he said.

Earlier, McConnell had unveiled a new bill loaded up with Trump’s other priorities as a possible off-ramp for the stalemate. It included the $2,000 checks more narrowly targeted to lower-income households as well as a complicated repeal of protections for tech companies like Facebook or Twitter under Section 230 of a communications law that the president complained is unfair to conservatives. It also tacked on the establishment of a bipartisan commission to review the 2020 presidential election Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden.

If McConnell sets a vote on his bill, it could revive Trump’s priorities. But because the approach contains the additional tech and elections provisions, Democrats and some Republicans will likely balk and it’s unlikely to have enough support in Congress to pass.

No additional votes on COVID aid have been scheduled at this point. For McConnell, the procedural moves allowed him to check the box over the commitments he made when Trump was defiantly refusing to sign off on the big year-end package last weekend. “That was a commitment, and that’s what happened,” he said.

Liberal senators, led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who support the relief boost are blocking action on a defense bill until a vote can be taken on Trump’s demand for $2,000 for most Americans.

Sanders thundered on the floor that McConnell should call his own constituents in the GOP leader’s home state of Kentucky “and find out how they feel about the need for immediate help in terms of a $2,000 check.”

Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida, among the party’s potential 2024 presidential hopefuls, also pushed in the president’s direction. Hawley is also leading Trump’s challenge Jan. 6 to the Electoral College result tally in Congress.

Other Republicans panned the bigger checks, arguing during a lively Senate debate that the nearly $400 billion price tag was too high, the relief is not targeted to those in need and Washington has already dispatched ample sums on COVID aid.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., tweeted that “blindly borrowing” billions “so we can send $2,000 checks to millions of people who haven’t lost any income is terrible policy.”

France, which launched its gradual vaccination campaign Sunday, saw the number of persons hospitalised for the disease decline by 183 over 24 hours.

However, the Covid-19 death toll was up by 303, at 64,381, versus a rise of 969 on Tuesday. France’s cumulative total of cases now stands at 2,600,498, the fifth-highest in the world.

The number of people in Intensive Care Units for the disease were down 14 over 24 hours at 2,661.

France’s daily cases have varied enormously since mid-December, ranging from around 3,000 to more than 21,000.

Speaking before the data were released, government spokesman Gabriel Attal said France was not planning local lockdown measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 for now, although he dampened hopes for a quick reopening of cultural attractions and said curfews could be tightened.

The government was keeping a close eye on some 20 French departments where cases were rising at a quicker pace, and Attal confirmed that curfews could be brought forward to 6 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. in some areas if needed.

The French government on Wednesday faced criticism over the slow progress of its drive to vaccinate people against Covid-19, a problem compounded by the high levels of public scepticism about the campaign.

France on Sunday joined several other EU countries in launching vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, focussing its initial efforts on elderly residents of care homes.

But in the first three days of the campaign less than 100 people have been given the jab — compared to 42,000 so far in Germany — raising questions over the government’s cautious approach to vaccinating a largely sceptical population.

France’s strategy “is not suited to a situation that is so dangerous,” Axel Kahn, a prominent geneticist who leads the National League against Cancer told Europe 1 radio.

Kahn said the government should seek to persuade people who are hesitating to be inoculated with “transparency and enthusiasm”.

“We need to protect the French people and those who are vulnerable.”

He also called for health workers to be moved to the top of the queue for the jab, over the elderly.

Epidemiologist Catherine Hill on the slow rollout of vaccines in France

Britain, which began vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine three weeks ahead of the EU, has already vaccinated hundreds of thousands of people, while over a million have received a jab in the United States.

Philippe Juvin, emergency services chief at Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, said that there appeared to be no national “vaccine strategy” in France.

“As an individual, I would like to be vaccinated, to set an example, and show people that we don’t die from the vaccine, we die from Covid. And when we don’t die, we get severe forms which are very disabling,” he told CNews TV channel.

‘Takes time’

A poll on vaccine consent conducted by Ipsos Global Advisor in partnership with the World Economic Forum showed the hurdles faced by the government to achieve mass immunity.

It showed that just 40 percent of the French want to receive the vaccine.

This puts France well behind other developed nations like Britain on 77 percent and the United States on 69 percent.

Speaking on France 2 television late Tuesday, Health Minister Olivier Veran defended the more measured pace in France, saying that officials were taking time to win people over to the idea of being vaccinated.

“It takes a little more time to get going,” he said, adding he expected to catch up on the rest of the world by the end of January.

Rebuffing criticism on social media, a health ministry official said: “We have not set out for a 100-metre sprint but a marathon.”

In tweets on Sunday welcoming the vaccine rollout, President Emmanuel Macron had alluded to the widespread vaccine scepticism in France.

He said “reason and science must guide us” in the homeland of Louis Pasteur, the 19th-century scientist who discovered the principles of vaccination.

“The vaccine is not obligatory. Have confidence in our scientists and doctors,” said Macron.

A 78-year-old woman became the first person vaccinated against Covid-19 in France when she received the country’s first dose at René-Muret Hospital in Sevran, Seine-Saint-Denis, outside Paris, according to an AFP journalist on site.

“I am moved,” said the woman, named only as Mauricette, a former housekeeper, who was inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine around 11am on Sunday in the public hospital’s long-term care unit. She smiled and was applauded by hospital staff after receiving the jab.

A 65-year-old cardiologist, Dr. Jean-Jacques Monsuez, was next to be vaccinated, shortly before 11:20am.

Some 20 seniors and healthcare workers are slated to receive the vaccine on Sunday during France’s symbolic launch of the programme, in Sevran as well as in a geriatric care centre in Dijon.

Covid-19 jabs begin across Europe in ‘moment of unity’

Martin Hirsch, head of public hospital group APHP, tweeted a picture of a woman receiving the vaccination Sunday morning and wrote, “A little jab from the nurse, a big step for immunity, we hope.”

The French government is aiming to have an initial one million people – consisting of seniors, vulnerable individuals and healthcare workers – vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of February in the country’s 7,000 nursing homes and related facilities.

European Union countries on Sunday embarked on the vaccination campaign hailed as the “key” to defeating Covid-19, as the growing spread of a new coronavirus variant intensified fears the pandemic could wreak further devastation.

The jab is a glimmer of hope for a continent still battling the pandemic in earnest, with infection rates again on the rise, lockdowns imposed and Christmas and New Year plans left in tatters for many.

The numbers vaccinated in the programme’s initial days with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab are largely symbolic and it will be months before enough are protected to envisage a return to normal from the pandemic that has killed 1.76 million people worldwide since emerging in China late last year.

Considered a longshot, Trump’s demand gained momentum at the start of the week when dozens of House Republicans calculated it was better to link with most Democrats than defy the outgoing president. They helped pass a bill raising the payments with a robust two-thirds vote of approval.

As Trump’s push fizzles out, his attempt to amend the year-end package — $900 billion in COVID-19 aid and $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies through September — will linger as potentially one last confrontation before the new Congress is sworn in Sunday.

The COVID-19 portion of the bill revives a weekly pandemic jobless benefit boost — this time $300, through March 14 — as well as the popular Paycheck Protection Program of grants to businesses to keep workers on payrolls. It extends eviction protections, adding a new rental assistance fund.

Americans earning up to $75,000 will qualify for the direct $600 payments, which are phased out at higher income levels, and there’s an additional $600 payment per dependent child.

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