The Covid-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca should be effective against the highly transmissible new strain of the virus, a UK media report said.
The Oxford vaccine, which also has a tie-up with the Serum Institute of India, is expected to win approval in the UK before Thursday, speeding up the provision of the jab to the most vulnerable groups.
The first priority is to vaccinate the 12 to 15 million people who would need hospitalisation if they caught Covid. Approval for the AstraZeneca vaccine would mean we are well on course to do that by the spring, a senior government official was quoted by The Sunday Times as saying. The source warned that the new strain of COVID-19 had overtaken the old and was running rampant in the UK.
Meanwhile, France started its first coronavirus vaccinations Sunday at a nursing home northeast of Paris, in one of the country’s poorest regions, as part of a Europe-wide vaccination rollout. An intense moment, carrying so much hope, tweeted the head of the Paris region public health service, Aurelien Rousseau.
A 78-year-old woman identified only by her first name, Mauricette, was given Frances first vaccine shot in the town of Sevran. Later in the day, vaccinations will be given at the Champmaillot home in Dijon. It’s everyone’s hope that the vaccine should take care of the new variant too.