Merkel’s Hand Prints Are All Over Germany’s Vaccine Failings
Bloomberg 2/1/2021 Arne Delfs and Naomi Kresge
(Bloomberg) Angela Merkel is starting to crack under the pressure of Germany’s faltering coronavirus vaccine program.
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With the chancellor under fire publicly for a lack of Covid-19 shots and her strategy of delegating responsibility to the European Union looking misguided, she snapped when pressed for answers by German state premiers during a closed-door meeting in early January.
Getting angrier than those involved had ever seen, she threatened to retaliate and make the officials’ mistakes public, shocking the participants into silence. On other occasions, she’s come close to tears in public in recent weeks.
EU to buy extra 100 mln doses of Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine
29 Dec 2020 - 22:44
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wears a mask after giving a statement on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, in Brussels, Belgium December 24, 2020. Francisco Seco/Pool via REUTERS
Reuters
BRUSSELS - The European Union will buy an extra 100 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech s COVID-19 vaccine, bringing the total from the two firms to 300 million doses, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday. We decided to take an additional 100 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, which is already being used to vaccinate people across the EU, she said on Twitter.
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By Caitlin Ostroff U.S. stock futures wobbled Tuesday as investors took stock of elevated Covid-19 infection levels, the rollout of vaccines and measures to curtail the spread of a new strain of the virus. Futures tied to the S&P 500 wavered between gains and losses, suggesting the benchmark gauge may be choppy in trading after the New York opening bell. Futures tied to the technology-focused Nasdaq-100 index gained 0.4%. Stocks have lost steam this week as a number of nations began taking steps to curtail travel in an effort to contain the emergence of a fast-spreading variant of coronavirus from England. The U.K. imposed stringent restrictions on social and business activity, prompting concern that more countries may also be required to adopt measures that would hamper the global economic recovery.
PM Narendra Modi reviewed the development of COVID-19 vaccine candidate ZyCOV-D in Ahmedabad.
As panic strikes with the news of a new variant of COVID-19, which was detected in the UK, there s some good news coming from pharma giant BioNTech. The German pharmaceutical company is confident that its vaccine for coronavirus will work effectively against the new variant of COVID strain reported in Britain.
BioNTech is basing its confidence on the fact that the proteins on the UK variant are 99 percent similar on the prevailing strains, which is why the vaccine will be effective. Scientifically, it is highly likely that the immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variant. We don t know at the moment if our vaccine is also able to provide protection against this new variant, said Ugur Sahin, the co-founder of BioNTech, expressing a hint of caution.