Jan. 8, 2021 2:42 pm ET
Countries around the world are accelerating their efforts to vaccinate their populations against Covid-19 in response to rising infections, public pressure, and fear of new, highly contagious variants of the coronavirus.
In an emerging race between the virus and vaccinations, some countries that previously took a cautious approach to authorizing and procuring vaccines, such as South Korea and Australia, are now bringing forward their timetables. Some other countries that were already pushing to inoculate swaths of their population quickly, such as the U.K. and Israel, are looking to further speed up their rollouts.
A year into the pandemic, the growing urgency behind vaccination programs shows how most of the world is still struggling to contain the virus with social-distancing measures alone. Stubbornly high infections, pressure on hospitals, public weariness with restrictions on everyday life and fear of accumulating economic damage are prompting
Provided by Dow Jones
By Laurence Norman in Brussels and Jason Douglas and Max Colchester in London The U.K. and the European Union secured an agreement over their future relations, setting the seal on the 2016 British referendum decision to leave the bloc and bringing to a close years of economic uncertainty and fraught politics in the U.K. The deal, coming just days ahead of an end-year deadline, calms the worst fears of a major economic disruption in coming weeks as Britain unmoors from its largest trading partner and is tackling another intense phase of the coronavirus pandemic. The accord, which follows months of tense negotiations and will take effect on Jan. 1, sets out the terms of a much more distant relationship between Britain and the EU than at present.