More vaccine news from China and Britain
China’s state-controlled firm Sinopharm said that a coronavirus vaccine candidate made by its Beijing arm was 79 percent effective in late-stage trials and that it had asked Chinese regulators to allow the vaccine to be used broadly.
But Sinopharm’s announcement provided no breakdown of results and left many questions unanswered. Officials have already moved ahead with plans to vaccinate 50 million people by mid-February, in time for the Lunar New Year holiday.
On Wednesday, Britain became the first country to approve the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use, opening a path for a cheap and easy-to-store shot. At $3 to $4 a dose, it costs a fraction of some other vaccines, and is likely to become the world’s dominant form of inoculation.
Looking back: The first alarm over the coronavirus was sounded a year ago, on Dec. 30. Our reporters examined the 25 days that changed the world.
The numbers: A new study released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control has suggested that the number of infections in Wuhan may have been far higher than official data shows.
Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In other developments:
■ A significant subset of patients recovering from Covid-19 are having to return to hospitals, sometimes repeatedly, with complications triggered by the disease or the body’s battle against it, studies show.
■ Millions more people in England were told they will be placed under the country’s tightest regulations starting Thursday to stop the spread of a contagious coronavirus variant, but the government stopped short of introducing a full national lockdown.
■ The first U.S. case of the more contagious coronavirus variant that was initially discovered in Britain was found in Colorado on Tuesday.
The New York Times
Me: As was pointed out to me – how long does a vaccine shot last and do “we” have to have multiple shots, to avoid getting Coronavirus again, or is the 2 shot procedure, a lifetime safety from Covid.
Also, everyone has had the first shot, but what happens after the second shot – any unpleasant reactions to it then?