The US tops the list of the most affected nations with over 29.6 million infected and 538,000 deaths. It is followed by Brazil with around 11.7 million cases and a death toll of over 284,000. At the same time, India has the third-highest number of infections (11.4 million cases, over 159,000 fatalities), while Mexico has the third-highest death toll in the world (over 195,000 deaths, with 2.1 million cases having been detected in the country).
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PARIS (Sputnik) – France will resume the massive vaccination with the AstraZeneca drug starting from Friday after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had found no evidence that the vaccine was associated with increased risks of blood clot events, Prime Minister Jean Castex said.
“Starting from tomorrow’s morning, the National Authority for Health … will actualize its recommendations on the AstraZeneca vaccine, so that we could resume the vaccination campaign immediately after that, starting from the afternoon,” Castex said on late Thursday.
The prime minister added that he would get a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine himself on Friday.
"I believe that the right decision was made. We acted swiftly and in the best interest of the population but also in the interests of the vaccination programme", Ronan Glynn told a press briefing.
"We need to increase… the portfolio of the vaccines. That's why the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is eagerly awaited and then we continue to work also with the Russian Federation very closely on the emergency use listing of Sputnik V", Hans Kluge said at a press briefing.
"We need to keep the confidence. If it's lost we need to restore it, particularly for AstraZeneca, which is the big supplier to the COVAX facility, which is the only facility which is really looking at equitable access", Regional Director for Europe Hans Henri Kluge said at a briefing.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The vaccination coverage in countries of the World Health Organization's European region ranges from less than 1 percent to 44 percent, WHO regional director Hans Kluge said Thursday.
"With vaccination coverage in the region ranging from less than one percent to 44 percent, it is… far too early to demonstrate the effect of vaccines on overall COVID-19 hospitalisation and deaths", he said at a press briefing.
"Over the past day, 9,803 coronavirus cases were confirmed across 85 Russian regions, including 1,170 cases (11.9 percent) without clinical symptoms", the coronavirus response centre said, adding that the cumulative case count has now reached 4,428,239, with the rate of increase at 0.22 percent.
"The vaccine rollout will be slightly slower than we might have hoped but not slower than the target", British Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said. "We have every reason to believe that supply will increase in the months of May, June and July".
The two pharmaceutical companies have rejected NHS claims that Britain is facing a COVID-19 vaccine shortage, according to Sky News.
We have an agreement with the government to supply 40 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to the UK by the end of the year. While the details of this agreement are confidential, we can confirm that Q1 deliveries remain on track and continue to progress in line with the monthly schedule, agreed in advance with the Vaccines Taskforce", Pfizer said in a statemment.
At the same time, AstraZeneca confirmed that "Our UK domestic supply chain is not experiencing any disruption and there is no impact on our delivery schedule".
NEW DELHI (Sputnik) – India has confirmed 35,871 new cases of the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, with the total number of those infected having reached 11,474,605, the country's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Thursday.
The death toll from the disease has reached 159,216 people, with 172 new fatalities recorded over the past day. More than 11.06 million people have recovered in India since the start of the outbreak.
"Today we are dealing with a situation when Europe has a lot of vaccines, but a significant part is exported outside of Europe... Together with Mr. President Macron, we urged not to export the vaccine", Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said upon his return from Paris, where he met with the French head of state.
