Pfizer COVID vaccine

Pfizer slashed in half the volume of Covid-19 vaccines the company will deliver to some EU countries this week, government officials said, as frustration over the U.S. drugmaker’s unexpected cut in supplies grows.

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is likely to protect against a more infectious variant of the virus discovered in Britain which has spread around the world, according to results of further lab tests.

Previous infection with the coronavirus may offer less protection against the new variant first identified in South Africa, although scientists hope that vaccines will still work.

A new, highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus first discovered in Britain could become the dominant variant in the United States by March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned.

Britain’s medical regulator on Jan. 8 approved Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for use, the health ministry said, adding that it agreed to purchase an additional 10 million doses with plans for a spring rollout of the shot.

Britain became the first country to vaccinate its population with Oxford University and AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot on Jan. 4, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson was set to tighten restrictions in England in a bid to slow the spread of cases.

China approved a Covid-19 vaccine developed by an affiliate of state-backed pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm on Dec. 31, the country’s first approved shot for general public use as it braces for increased transmission risks over winter.

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University will likely be authorized for emergency use in the United States in April 2021, the chief adviser for the U.S. Covid-19 vaccine program said.

The overall efficacy of AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine approved in Britain on Dec. 30 in preventing symptomatic infections was 70.4%, compared with 95% efficacy for the Pfizer/BioNTech shot, the first novel coronavirus vaccine approved in Britain on Dec. 2.

Britain on Dec. 30 became the first country in the world to approve the coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, hoping that rapid action will help it stem a record surge of infections driven by a highly contagious form of the virus.