Under WHO s plan, India s variant will be known as Covid Delta , while the UK s Kent strain will be known as Covid Alpha . The Brazilian variant will be known as Gamma and South African as Beta .
He insisted, in future, European leaders should listen to their scientific advisors the same way Britain has.
Mr Swarbrick said: Europe is set to approve AstraZeneca for the over 65s, in the coming weeks. What is your personal view in how that has been handled?
Mr Read replied: I think the European politicians made a grave mistake.
EU made grave mistake delaying AstraZeneca vaccine as member states backtrack (Image: LBC)
EU news: EU member states Germany and France are expected to begin using the AstraZeneca vaccine on the over-65s in their population (Image: Getty) Our politicians don t make scientific judgments on vaccine efficacy and I expect the EU s politicians to do the same thing.
Test results from the University of Oxford published in a pre-print report in The Lancet show that the first shot may reduce transmission among people who have had the jab by 67% while providing an average of 76% protection against symptomatic infections from three weeks until 90 days.
In a finding that appears to support the UK’s decision to delay second doses, the research also indicates “that spacing out the second dose by a longer period in fact further increases its efficacy”, reports Politico’s London Playbook.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock welcomed the news as “absolutely superb”, adding that the early results show that “vaccines are the way out of this pandemic”.
BBC News
By Rebecca Henschke & Pijar Anugrah
BBC World Service
image captionYounger workers, like this Jakarta mall vendor, are seen as key to tackling the virus crisis
Indonesia has rolled out a mass free Covid-19 vaccination programme in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus and get its economy going again.
But the country is taking a markedly different approach to others. Instead of vaccinating elderly people in the first phase, after frontline workers, it will target younger working people aged 18 to 59.
President Joko Widodo, 59, was the first person in the country to receive the vaccine shot on Wednesday. Vice-President Ma ruf Amin, 77, will not get the jab early as he is too old.