The French government is to provide daily updates on the number of people it has vaccinated after criticism of the slow pace of its jab programme compared with other European countries.
Health minister Olivier Véran told parliament on Tuesday his ministry would publish a detailed table with the number of people vaccinated per region every evening, Reuters reports.
La vaccination, qu’elle se fasse en EHPAD, à l’hôpital ou demain dans les centres de vaccination, est un acte simple. Certains se plaisent à inventer des procédures qui n’ont jamais existé autre part que dans les esprits chagrins, prompts à la polémique.@AssembleeNatpic.twitter.com/EcJo69vq1y
A first list was published on Monday evening, showing that more than 138,000 people have been vaccinated to date, including more than 30,000 in the Paris region.
That number is well below the more than 1mn vaccine doses available in France, but Véran said the government would stick to its policy of prioritising the most vulnerable people, even if that meant a slower pace, rather than opting for mass vaccination of all citizens.
For now, France is giving priority to residents of retirement homes, but early January it widened that to health staff over 50 or with existing illnesses.
Veran said the government was also drawing up plans to make vaccines available to people under 75 who suffer from certain illnesses – with a target of having a total of 1 million people vaccinated by the end of January.
He said:
We cannot vaccinate the entire population in one go. Vaccines need to be produced and distributed first.
Veran said that last week, France had 1,080,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in stock and was being supplied with 500,000 more doses per week, which will increase to 1 million per week.
On Monday, France had received the first 50,000 Moderna vaccine doses, which will be deployed in areas which face a strong resurgence of the epidemic.
Italy has announced another 14,242 new cases and 612 new deaths from coronavirus. Both figures mark a rise on that tallies announced on Monday, when 12,532 new cases and 448 more deaths were reported.
Coronavirus, il bollettino di oggi 12 gennaio: 14,242 nuovi casi e 616 morti https://t.co/feQ2fIG9op
In Europe, Italy is the second worst hit country by the pandemic. Before today’s announcement it had recorded 79,203 deaths, compared to the UK with 82,096, according to the tally run by Johns Hopkins University.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) did not provide details on which documents or data were made available online, but said necessary action was being taken by law enforcement authorities.
Hacking attempts against healthcare and medical organisations have intensified during the pandemic as attackers ranging from state-backed spies to cyber criminals hunt for valuable information.
The agency continues to fully support the criminal investigation into the data breach and to notify any additional entities and individuals whose documents and personal data may have been subject to unauthorised access.
The watchdog has not so far named the third parties who were affected, but Pfizer and BioNTech announced soon after the EMA’s initial disclosure that documents relating to their vaccine were accessed in the incident.
Some Covid-related documents and data that were accessed in a cyber attack have been leaked on the internet, Europe’s medicines regulator has said. It did not provide details on which documents or data were made available online, but said necessary action was being taken by law enforcement authorities.
Sweden has registered 17,395 new cases since Friday, taking the total to more than 500,000 cases since the start of the pandemic, as hospitals struggled to cope with a rampant second wave, Health Agency statistics show.
The statistics showed that 17 December was the deadliest day since the start of the pandemic with 116 deaths, surpassing a previous peak of 115 daily deaths set in April.
More people are being treated at hospitals in Sweden now than at any time during the pandemic. While Sweden still has around 20% spare capacity at intensive care units, there are worries the spread will accelerate again as people return to work and schools after the holidays.
Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist, told a news conference:
It’s quite obvious that the healthcare system is as strained now (as during the spring). We are near the limit for what the healthcare system can handle.
The country of 10 million inhabitants registered 234 new deaths since Friday, taking the total to 9,667. The deaths registered have occurred over several days and weeks with many from the Christmas period being registered with a significant delay.
The second wave has also affected how Swedes perceive authorities’ handling of the crisis. In December, 47% said they had relatively high or high confidence in the government’s and agencies’ actions; down from 52% in the previous month.
Sweden’s death rate per capita is several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours but lower than several European countries that opted for lockdowns.
More than 70m doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech were produced by the end of 2020, the former’s chief executive Albert Bourla has said.
At the end of the last week of 2020, for example, we had already manufactured more than 70m doses and we had released from there – because there’s a quality control that you need to release – around 50m doses. Then we manufactured more the first week of January.
Right now, I think we’ve released 33m doses. And we have, let’s say, half of what we have manufactured sitting on the shelves.
BioNTech said on Monday the companies were boosted the 2021 delivery target for their vaccine to 2bn doses, up from 1.3bn previously, as they add new production lines and as more doses can be extracted per vial.
Mexico aims to conclude the vaccination of health workers by the end of January, the country’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said.
The deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell added that health authorities will move quickly to authorise the use of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. He said:
The president has instructed us to proceed speedily on finalising the process of sanitary approval.
Lopez-Gatell, Mexico’s coronavirus czar, said national health regulator Coferis would very soon make its decision on approving emergency use of the Sputnik vaccine and that the country is considering acquiring 24m doses.
The deputy minister also noted that Mexico could begin receiving its first batches of a vaccine made by Chinese company CanSino Biologics in February. The president said his government aimed to conclude the vaccination of the country’s health workers by the end of January.
The Dutch government is expected to announce a three-week extension of lockdown measures on Tuesday, national broadcaster NOS reported. The prime minister Mark Rutte was scheduled to announce the latest social curbs to fight the pandemic.
Citing government sources, NOS said the lockdown would be lengthened through the first week of February instead of being lifted on 19 January.
Infections in the Netherlands declined by 12% in the week through Tuesday, to 49,398, Dutch health authorities said, marking the second consecutive week in which cases fell. The National Institute for Public Health said:
The falling numbers are the first effect of the lockdown that went into effect on 15 December.
All schools and many stores across the country were shut in mid-December, following the closure of all bars and restaurants two months earlier.
Although the infection rate has dropped, the number of new daily cases remains too high to consider easing restrictions, Rutte said last week. His cabinet had considered imposing an evening curfew, NOS reported, but decided against it because of opposition from regional officials.
Last Wednesday, a Dutch nurse became the first person in the Netherlands to receive a shot as the European Union’s last national vaccination programme got off to a late start.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has asked European Union countries for more help in procuring vaccines after his government resisted turning to Russia for assistance.
The pandemic has killed more than 20,000 Ukrainians and plunged one of Europe’s poorest countries into recession last year.
Ukraine has agreed to buy some vaccines from China and also expects to secure some under the global Covax programme for poorer countries.
But it has dismissed calls from a Russian-leaning opposition leader to buy vaccines from Russia. The neighbours are estranged over Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for rebels in eastern Ukraine. During a televised statement while hosting the Moldovan president Maia Sandu in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said:
Today, for all countries of the Eastern Partnership initiative, in particular Ukraine and Moldova, the issue of obtaining vaccines is important. The countries of the Eastern Partnership should be given increased attention by the EU states in matters of joint procurement procedures and accelerating the supply of vaccines.
A week ago, 13 of the EU’s 27 member states jointly urged the bloc’s executive, the EU commission, to do more to help combat the coronavirus in the bloc’s Balkan neighbours and in Ukraine.
Sandu came to power in November by defeating Moldova’s Moscow-backed incumbent president Igor Dodon and has promised closer cooperation with the EU.
Last month, while visiting Chisinau, the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis promised to donate 200,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to Moldova as a gesture of solidarity following Sandu’s election.
India’s Bharat Biotech has signed an agreement with a medicine distributor to supply its vaccine to Brazil, it has said, even as the shot’s emergency use approval in its home country has faced criticism.
India’s drug regulator has given emergency use approval to Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, as well as to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, known as Covishield in India, which is being produced by the Serum Institute of India.
But health experts and opposition lawmakers have criticised approval of Covaxin due to a lack of efficacy data, which the manufacturer is still conducting.
Bharat Biotech said it has signed an agreement with a Brazil-based pharmaceutical seller, Precisa Medicamentos, to supply Covaxin. The Indian company said:
It is understood between both parties that supplies of Covaxin (are) to be prioritised for the public market, through a direct procurement by the government of Brazil.
Criticism of India’s approval of the vaccine has grown after news that a regulatory panel approved the shot just one day after asking the vaccine maker for more evidence it would work.
Bharat Biotech, which developed Covaxin with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said supplies to the private market would depend on authorisation from the Brazilian regulatory authority.
Brazil has registered more than 8m cases since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen over 203,000, the world’s second-deadliest coronavirus outbreak.
Brazil has signed agreements to receive other vaccines. Authorities there are facing growing pressure to speed up the vaccine rollout, which is lagging regional peers. Mexico, Chile and Argentina have already begun immunisations.
