India approves vaccines as nations race towards inoculation

January 4 ------ India approved the emergency use of two Covid-19 vaccines on Sunday, as nations across the world raced to get their populations inoculated to beat back surging infection numbers. More than a year after Covid-19 first emerged it has killed more than 1.8 million people out of 84 million confirmed cases. Governments hope that recently approved vaccines can staunch the spread of the virus and stop a cycle of economically crippling restrictions.

Britain on Sunday became the latest country to warn of tougher measures to come, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitting he was “reconciled” to the prospect hours after his country registered a new daily record of 57,725 Covid-19 cases. But he told the BBC “we can see the way ahead”, revealing that 530,000 doses of the newly approved AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine would be available from Monday. He also told parents that they should “absolutely” send their young children to school when term begins, despite objections from teachers’ unions and some parents who argue that they are major vectors of infection.

Britain has already vaccinated around one million people with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and Johnson said he hoped tens of millions would get the new jab in the next three months.

– Different countries, different speeds –

India, the world’s second-most infected nation, on Sunday authorized the use of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine as well as one produced by local pharmaceutical firm Bharat Biotech. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest manufacturer of vaccines, has said it is making between 50 and 60 million doses a month of the former vaccine.

India has already held nationwide drills to prepare for one of the world’s biggest vaccination programmes, aiming to inoculate 300 million of its 1.3 billion people by mid-2021. Israel has claimed the fastest start to vaccinations so far, saying on Sunday that two million people — around a fifth of its population — would have received both the required shots by the end of January. Germany’s Robert Koch Institute said Sunday that 238,809 people have been vaccinated there, but neighboring France’s government has come under pressure over a slow rollout.

“The whole healthcare community does not understand why there is such a difference with Germany: Germany vaccinates 20,000 people a day, we are at 50,” Professor Mehdi Mejdoubi of the Valenciennes hospital center in France’s north told BFMTV. French government spokesman Gabriel Attal on Sunday announced an acceleration of the vaccine programme and more resources to get the resident’s in elderly care home inoculated.

Source: mb.com.ph