A scramble for unproven vaccines in China
Though China’s vaccine candidates have not formally been proved safe or effective, officials have been injecting them into thousands of people under an emergency-use policy, in an effort to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness.
The campaign has succeeded perhaps too well. In the city of Yiwu, 500 doses were consumed within hours. Other cities are limiting doses. The overwhelming demand has inspired a cottage industry of scalpers charging as much as $1,500 for an appointment.
Users could be taking big risks. People who have taken the vaccines believing they are safe might engage in risky behavior. They could be barred from taking another, better vaccine because they have already been injected. In a few cases, unproven vaccines have caused health risks. It is unclear how many people have received a vaccine candidate.
Quotable: “We risk losing confidence in people if indeed adverse effects occur,” said Kristine Macartney, director of the National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance in Sydney, Australia.
Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In other developments:

■ Blood samples from recovered Covid-19 patients suggest a powerful immune response that could last years, and maybe even decades, researchers reported. The research has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a scientific journal. But it is the most comprehensive and long-ranging study of immune memory to the coronavirus to date.

■ Belgian authorities violated the human rights of nursing home residents by failing to protect them during the first months of the pandemic and leaving some to die prematurely, according to a report by Amnesty International.

■ President-elect Joe Biden warned on Monday that “more people may die” from the coronavirus if President Trump does not agree to coordinate planning for the mass distribution of a vaccine when it becomes available.
The New York Times