Coronavirus vaccine highlights: Nearly 20 lakh given Covid-19 vaccine doses in India

Mexican health officials expect Russian backing for the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine's quick arrival in the country, Mexico's foreign minister said on Monday, following a phone call between the presidents of both countries earlier in the morning.

The call between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador marked one of the first public duties by the Mexican leader following his positive Covid-19 diagnosis on Sunday.

. The number of beneficiaries vaccinated against Covid-19 in the country had crossed 19.5 lakh till the evening of Monday, the 10th day of the nationwide immunisation drive, the health ministry said.

A total of 19,50,183 beneficiaries were inoculated in 35,785 sessions till 7.10 pm on Monday, including 3,34,679 in 7,171 sessions during the day, the ministry said, adding that the final report would be compiled by late in the night.

. Over 7,400 healthcare workers received Covid-19 vaccine shots in Delhi on Monday as the inoculation drive picked up pace in the city, recording 91 per cent turnout for the day, officials said.

The targeted number for vaccination on January 25 was 8,100, they said.

"On January 25, 7,408 people were administered coronavirus vaccine, with a coverage span of 91.5 per cent. AEFI (adverse events following immunisation) was reported in 14 persons," a senior official of the Delhi Health Department said.

. Kerala reported 3,361 positive cases, including a UK returnee, on Monday, while 5606 people were cured of the infection, taking the total caseload to 8.93 lakh and recoveries to 8.19 lakh, the government said.

Seventeen more fatalities pushed the toll to 3,624. As many as 70,624 people are presently undergoing treatment for the disease, Health minister K K Shailaja said in a statement.

. Moderna Inc said on Monday its Covid-19 vaccine produced virus-neutralizing antibodies against new variants of Covid-19 found in the UK and South Africa.

A two-dose regimen of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine is expected to be protective against emerging strains detected to date, the company said.

. The European Union is pressuring the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to deliver more coronavirus vaccine doses to its 27 nations and to stick to its initial promises once the jab gets EU approval, especially since the bloc has already invested in enhancing production capacity.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held urgent talks Monday with company chief Pascal Soriot, and EU nations are also meeting with AstraZeneca to encourage the British-Swedish company to ramp up its vaccine production and meet its contractual targets.

. The world's largest syringe maker does not have the capacity to substantially increase US supplies of specialty syringes needed to squeeze more doses from Pfizer Inc Covid-19 vaccine vials in the coming weeks, an executive said in an interview.

The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, one of two authorized for US emergency use, is shipped in vials initially indicated to hold five doses. Six doses can be drawn with special syringes, call low dead space, which minimize the amount of vaccine left in the syringe after use.

. The European Union will require pharmaceutical companies producing Covid-19 vaccines inside the bloc to register in advance any exports of doses to third countries, an EU official said on Monday.

The move comes after AstraZeneca on Friday unexpectedly announced a large cut in supplies of vaccines to the bloc for the first quarter of the year.

The executive European Commission would create a transparency register for vaccine exports outside the bloc, the official told Reuters, adding that the new rule was due to enter into force in the coming days.

"Export licences for humanitarian purposes will be regularly issued," the official said.

. Drugmaker Merck & Co on Monday said it will end development of its two Covid-19 vaccines, and will focus pandemic research on treatments, with initial efficacy data on an experimental oral antiviral expected by the end of March.

Merck said in a statement it will record a pretax discontinuation charge in the fourth quarter for vaccine candidate V591, which it acquired with the purchase of Austrian vaccine maker Themis Bioscience, and V590, developed with nonprofit research organization IAVI.

In early trials, both vaccines generated immune responses that were inferior to those seen in people who had recovered from Covid-19 as well as those reported for other Covid-19 vaccines, the company said.

. For Alphabet Inc's Verily, a healthcare venture that is one the tech giant's most prominent "other bets," the coronavirus pandemic offered an immediate business opportunity.

. Faced with the problem of circulation of rumours about the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, the Centre has asked the states to check the spread of such misinformation and advised them to take penal action against those who are found to be involved in the dissemination of wrong and ill-informed news.

. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday he was looking at toughening the United Kingdom's border controls because of the risk of "vaccine-busting" new variants of the coronavirus.

"We have to realise there is at least the theoretical risk of a new variant that is a vaccine-busting variant coming in - we've got to be able to keep that under control," Johnson told reporters at a vaccination centre.

. Hong Kong has formally approved use of the Fosun Pharma-BioNTech vaccine, the city government said on Monday, the first Covid-19 vaccine to be accepted in the Asian financial hub.

The first batch of around one million doses is expected to arrive in the second half of February, the government added in a statement.

The move comes with Hong Kong lagging other developed cities in rolling out vaccines and after mainland China started its vaccine program in July last year.

. Bahrain has approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, state news agency BNA reported on Monday, citing the Gulf country's National Health Regulatory Authority.

. (Reuters)

. Google's Indian-American CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Monday that the tech giant will open up its spaces in the US to serve as mass Covid-19 vaccination sites and committed more than $150 million to promote vaccine education. Google is initially looking at offices’ spaces inside the US, but is open to do the same in other countries as well, a company official said.

(PTI)

. Delhi faced an extreme level of the coronavirus pandemic, but its health system did not collapse due to "reforms" in recent years and better management, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday.

. Global life insurers are taking steps to curb payouts stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, including long-term health consequences that are not fully understood, industry sources told Reuters.

. Puducherry added 18 new coronavirus cases taking the overall tally to 38,878 while no fresh fatality was reported from the union territory during the last 24 hours, a top Health department official said on Monday.

No fresh fatality was reported from any of the four regions-Puducherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam, Director of Health and Family Welfare S Mohan Kumar said in a release. (PTI)

. Japan is likely to achieve herd immunity to Covid-19 through mass inoculations only months after the planned Tokyo Olympics, even though it has locked in the biggest quantity of vaccines in Asia, according to a London-based forecaster.

That would be a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga who has pledged to have enough shots for the populace by the middle of 2021, as it trails most major economies in starting Covid-19 inoculations. (Reuters)

. Australia on Monday approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for use but warned AstraZeneca's international production problems mean the country would need to distribute a locally manufactured shot earlier than planned.

The country's medical regulator was one of the first in the world to complete a comprehensive approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, noting it was a year since the first local coronavirus case was detected. (Reuters)

. Turkey received 6.5 million further doses of the coronavirus vaccine made by China's Sinovac Biotech on Monday, CNN Turk and other media reported, allowing its nationwide rollout to continue.

An initial consignment of 3 million doses previously arrived in Turkey and it has so far vaccinated 1.245 million people, mostly health workers and elderly people, according to health ministry data. (Reuters)

. An Army man tested positive for Covid-19 in Arunachal Pradesh, taking the tally in the northeastern state to 16,819, a senior health department official said on Monday.

The single case was detected from Dahung military camp in West Kameng district through RT-PCR test and the patient was asymptomatic, State Surveillance Officer (SSO) Dr Lobsang Jampa said. (PTI)

. Drug firm Zydus Cadila on Monday said it has received positive results from phase 2(b) studies of Desidustat in Covid-19 patients conducted in Mexico.

In June 2020,Zydus Cadila had received approval from Mexico's regulatory authority Cofepris to test one of its lead research candidate Desidustat in the management of Covid-19. (PTI)

. India’s economy showed signs a recovery is taking root as waning virus cases and a vaccine roll-out supported sentiment and as focus turns to further stimulus possible in the upcoming federal budget.

The needle on a dial measuring overall economic activity wasunchangedat 5 last month, indicating the economy was coasting along in the fast lane. Although seven of the eight high-frequency indicators tracked by Bloomberg News held steady and one deteriorated, the gauge uses the three-month weighted average to smooth out volatility in the single-month readings.

. Riding pillion on a neighbour's motorcycle for 40 minutes through hillsides dotted with paddy fields, the 34-year-old health worker headed for the Mathalput Community Health Centre.

Jani's name was on a list of 100 health workers at the centre, making her one of the first Indians to be inoculated against Covid-19 earlier this month, as the country rolls out a vaccination programme the government calls the world's biggest.

But she had heard rumours of serious side effects and worried about what would happen were she to get ill.

. India reported13,203 new Covid-19 cases and 131 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per the Union Health Ministry.

With the latestspike, India's coronavirus cases tally rose to1,06,67,736 with1,84,182 active cases. India saw13,298 discharges in a single day, taking the country's totaldischarges to1,03,30,084.

. Billionaires including Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Tesla founder Elon Musk have seen their wealth soar during the Covid-19 pandemic while the world's poor face years of hardship, charity Oxfam said on Monday as it demanded steps to tackle inequality.

Nations have a "shrinking window of opportunity" to build a fair, green recovery, according to "The Inequality Virus" report, published as global leaders tune in for the World Economic Forum's virtual "Davos Dialogue" meeting.

. Israel will halt most air travel in and out of the country for at least a week starting from midnight Monday, in an effort to block the invasion of emerging virus variants that could threaten the success of the country’s vaccination campaign.

“We are hermetically closing the skies, other than for really rare exceptions, to prevent the entry of mutations of the virus, and also to ensure that we can progress quickly with our vaccination campaign,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.

. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and treatments effective against new variants until collective immunity is reached, the agency's chief said on Sunday.

Dr Rochelle Walensky spoke about the rapidly evolving virus during a Fox News Sunday interview as the number of Americans known to be infected surpassed 25 million, with more than 417,000 dead, just over a year after the first US case was documented

. Tata Medical & Diagnostics is said to have started initial discussions with Moderna Inc for a partnership to launch its Covid-19 vaccine in India, the Economic Times reported on Monday.

Tata could team up with the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) to carry out clinical trials of Moderna's vaccine candidate in India, the report added, citing officials familiar with the matter.

. More than 25 million Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the United States since the pandemic began, Johns Hopkins University said Sunday, just days after President Joe Biden's inauguration.

The milestone was reached only five days after the US, the world's wealthiest and hardest-hit nation, recorded 400,000 deaths from the disease.

. A 45-year-old Anganwaadi teacher who was administered Covid-19 vaccine nearly a week ago, died after complaining of chest pain overnight in Warangal district in Telangana, doctors said on Sunday.

The teacher, vaccinated on January 19, had taken some medicines on Saturday night as she was having chestpain and slept in her house at Shayampeta on the outskirts of Warangal. She was found dead on Sunday morning, they said.

. The European Union said Sunday that it would take legal action if necessary to ensure pharmaceutical companies fulfilled contracts to supply Covid-19 vaccines to the bloc, after announcements of delays in vaccine deliveries.

“We intend to enforce the contracts that were signed by the pharmaceutical companies” and will be “using all the legal means that are at our disposal,” said Charles Michel, president of the EU’s European Council. He was speaking on “Le grand rendez-vous,” a program that is a collaboration of Europe 1 radio, CNEWS channel and Les Echos news site.

Coronavirus vaccine highlights: Nearly 20 lakh given Covid-19 vaccine doses in India

Mexico expects arrival of Russia's Sputnik vaccine shortly

Over 19.5 lakh people vaccinated against Covid-19 in India: Health ministry

Over 7,400 people receive Covid-19 vaccine shots on Monday in Delhi; 14 adverse events

Kerala reports 3,361 Covid-19 cases, over 5,000 recoveries

Moderna says Covid-19 vaccine expected to be protective against new variants

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