Israel keep leading the world in their vaccination campaign with already 30% of the entire country got their first jab with the hopes of getting life to normal in the small country by the end of March.

In the first weeks of the campaign Israel had been focusing on at risk groups and until now a world record number of 76% of those aged 60 and over have been vaccinated with the first shot.

That means only 311,000 people remain among this population group who have not yet been vaccinated at all (many of them are in in the jewish orthodox and Arab communities who have been less excited getting the vaccine so far.)

Another good news is that the Israeli Emergency Department of the Ministry of Health conducted an analysis of the all data of those vaccinated with the second vaccine. This is everyone who received the first vaccine dose between December 20 and 27. The vast majority of vaccinated (between 64 and 78 percent of each vaccination day) arrived to receive the second dose of vaccine within exactly 21 days. This is a very encouraging indeed and shows high compliance with those who received the first shot, which is extra important in this most vulnerable age group.

https://newswiresource.com/30-of-israel-population-had-received-first-dosage-of-covid-vaccine/

More than four million people in the UK have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, according to government figures.

People in their 70s and the clinically extremely vulnerable in England are now among those being offered the vaccine.

However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said UK data showed more people were in hospital with Covid than ever - and urged people to follow lockdown rules.

He said: "Do not blow it now. We are on the route out. We have to stick at it."

Speaking during a Downing Street briefing, Mr Hancock said more than half of those over 80 and half of elderly care home residents had been vaccinated.

He said that in some parts of the country the "vast majority" of people in their 80s had had their first dose - and specifically congratulated Slough for having already vaccinated every single elderly care home resident.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55710758

President-elect Joe Biden’s goal of delivering 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine within the first 100 days of his presidency “is absolutely a doable thing,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Sunday.

Fauci, speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press”, said two new vaccines under development by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson could “very soon” be presented to U.S. regulators for approval, which would increase the pace of vaccinations. “We’re weeks away, not months away, for sure,” he said.

He said more vaccinations - coupled with mask-wearing and avoiding crowds - would be the best way for the United States to tackle a new, more infectious strain of the coronavirus.

“If we can get the overwhelming majority of the population vaccinated, we’d be in very good shape and could beat even the mutant,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fauci-idUSKBN29M0GY

Two more Covid vaccine candidates are likely just around the corner, a development that would provide a much-needed boost to the US programme to vaccinate millions of its citizens, Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, has said.

A pair of vaccines from the drugmakers AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have wrapped up their clinical trials and could be cleared for use in the US within “a few weeks” pending the government review process, Dr Fauci said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

The drug companies’ own safety monitoring boards will first need to ensure the data from their clinical trials is sound and proves they have a safe, effective vaccine.

“Their data, I think very soon – I would imagine within a period of a week or so, or at the most a couple of weeks – they're going to be getting their data together and showing it to the FDA,” Dr Fauci said.

The FDA will then make a quick, yet thorough, determination on the new vaccines’ emergency use.

“We're weeks away, not months away. For sure,” Dr Fauci said.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fauci-covid-vaccine-astrazeneca-johnson-b1788615.html

People in England are being vaccinated four times faster than new cases of the virus are being detected, NHS England's chief executive has said.

Sir Simon Stevens told the BBC that 140 people a minute were now being given the jab, usually the first dose of two.

Sir Simon told the Andrew Marr Show some hospitals would open for vaccinations 24 hours a day, seven days a week on a trial basis in the next 10 days.

He said England was on course to deliver 1.5 million doses this week. Scotland has delivered a total of more than 224,000 first doses, Wales has given over 126,000 and Northern Ireland nearly 118,000 - although Scotland and Wales do not report figures at the weekend.

Half of all over-80s have now been vaccinated, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said. "Each jab brings us one step closer to normal," he said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55694967

Pfizer and BioNTech said Saturday (Jan 16) they will limit the delays of their vaccine deliveries to just one week, after fears in Europe that shipments of the jabs could be slowed for up to a month.

The US drugmaker and its German partner "have developed a plan that will allow the scale-up of manufacturing capacities in Europe and deliver significantly more doses in the second quarter," they said in a joint statement.

"As a result, our facility in Puurs, Belgium will experience a temporary reduction in the number of doses delivered in the upcoming week."

Pfizer and BioNTech pledged that deliveries would be back to the original schedule to the European Union from the week of Jan 25, with increased delivery from the week of February 15.

"To accomplish this, certain modifications of production processes are required now." Pfizer had said Friday it would delay shipments of the jabs over the next three to four weeks due to works at its key plant in Belgium.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/pfizer-biontech-to-limit-delays-of-vaccine-shipments-to-one-week

For a few hours this week, we were given an insight into the closely-guarded secret at the centre of the UK's vaccination programme.

It came courtesy of the Scottish government, which published its vaccination plan on Wednesday.

The plan included detailed figures for the number of vaccines that would be supplied to Scotland by the UK each week until the end of May.

The UK government has promised to offer COVID-19 vaccines to 15 million vulnerable people by the middle of February.

More than a month into the programme, it's managed to give 3.2 million people a jab. By international standards this is impressive. What's more, according to today's figures, the daily rate is now close to what is needed for the government to hit its goal.

Assuming that there are no problems with the supply or the delivery, Scotland will have enough vaccine to offer two doses to every adult in the country by the middle of July.

In practice, not everyone will take up the offer of a vaccine so these targets could be reached even faster. The Scottish government itself is expecting 80% take-up; our numbers are based on 100% take-up.

We can also use these numbers to estimate when the UK as a whole will get its vaccines. This involves making some assumptions, so any figures should be taken with a pinch of salt.

But the results these numbers produce explains why, behind the scenes, ministers are so confident about the rollout of the vaccine.

Of course there are many things that could go wrong from here. Raw materials can run short. Vaccines can get lost or wasted.

But there are reasons to be optimistic.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-every-uk-adult-could-be-vaccinated-by-mid-july-if-these-figures-are-anything-to-go-by-12188909

Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned of a potentially dire spring and summer without protective immunity as Ohio State researchers found a new Covid strain in the U.S. with mutations that scientists haven’t seen before.

“If we can’t get more protective immunity into the population, we could be facing a situation where we have, sort of, a perpetual infection heading into the spring and summer as these variants get a foothold here,” said the former FDA chief in the Trump administration in an interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.”

The U.S. has had a slow vaccine rollout, and distributed 30.6 million vaccines and put 11 million of those into people’s arms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gottlieb warned that the variants could transform what could have been a relatively quiet spring and summer, into “a summer where we have more infection because these variants are now circulating and they spread more easily, even in the warm months, when we really shouldn’t have had a lot of coronavirus spreading.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/14/coronavirus-live-updates.html

Australia is on course to record its second straight day of zero local COVID-19 cases, helped by tougher restrictions on public movement and internal borders, but authorities continued to urge more people to get tested to track undetected cases.

Australia has been seeking to contain fresh virus outbreaks since last month with impacted regions placed under lockdown and masks made mandatory indoors but infection rates seem to have stabilised after low cases in recent days.

New South Wales (NSW), the country’s most populous state, flagged it could ease restrictions soon if testing numbers rise as more tests could help trace all unknown infections.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia-idUSKBN29K03I?taid=600138c3933c880001bc12a4