Coronavirus live news: UK to start vaccinations on Tuesday; WHO criticises mandatory vaccines | World news

As countries begin deploying vaccines in the coming weeks and months, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged them to prioritise those most in need.

“These are not easy decisions,” he said, setting out the WHO guidelines.

AFP: Tedros said health workers at high risk of infection were a top priority, plus people at the highest risk of serious disease or death due to their age – thereby easing the pressure on health systems.

He said they should later be followed by people with a higher risk of severe disease due to underlying conditions, and marginalised groups at higher risk.

The WHO’s ACT-Accelerator mechanism, pooling risk and reward among countries rich and poor, is a global attempt to speed up the development of Covid-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, and purchase and distribute them evenly regardless of wealth.

However, the scheme needs $4.3 billion urgently, with a further $23.9 billion required in 2021.

“What we need now globally is not to enter the land of empty promises in terms of supporting the ACT-Accelerator,” said Ryan, urging wealthy donors to stump up.

“The means to do this allocation fairly and equitably is there. But what’s not in place is the financing to make that happen in 2021.

“There’s too much of a gap between the rhetoric and the reality.”

The World Health Organization said Monday that persuading people on the merits of a Covid-19 vaccine would be far more effective than trying to make the jabs mandatory, AFP reports.

The WHO said it would be down to individual countries as to how they want to conduct their vaccination campaigns against the coronavirus pandemic.

But the UN health agency insisted making it mandatory to get immunised against the disease would be the wrong road to take, adding there were examples in the past of mandating vaccines use only to see it backfire with greater opposition to them.

“I don’t think that mandates are the direction to go in here, especially for these vaccines,” Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s immunisation department, told a virtual news conference.

“It is a much better position to actually encourage and facilitate the vaccination without those kinds of requirements.

“I don’t think we envision any countries creating a mandate for vaccination.”

O’Brien said there may be certain hospital professions in which being vaccinated might be required or highly recommended for staff and patient safety.

But WHO experts admitted there was a battle to be fought to convince the general public to take the vaccines as they become available.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest updates from around the world.

You can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan to ask me what I would like for Christmas.

Britain is set to administer the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday, with the NHS giving top priority to people over the age of 80, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents.

Meanwhile theWorld Health Organization said Monday that persuading people on the merits of a Covid-19 vaccine would be far more effective than trying to make the jabs mandatory.

The WHO said it would be down to individual countries as to how they want to conduct their vaccination campaigns against the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• France unlikely to end lockdown as planned on 15 December. The French health ministry’s top official, Jérôme Salomon, has backed up the bleak assessment attributed to the health minister, Olivier Véran, earlier, who said the country was unlikely to meet the conditions required for ending its national lockdown on 15 December.
• Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who tested positive for Covid-19, is doing well in the hospital and does not have a fever, the US president said. “Rudy’s doing well,” Trump told reporters. “No temperature, and he actually called me earlier this morning.”
• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will get up to 249,000 doses of the vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech before the end of December.
• Italy’s interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, discovered during a cabinet meeting on Monday that she had coronavirus, prompting her to leave the gathering hastily. political sources told Reuters. Citing a source in her office, the news agency reported that Lamorgese was asymptomatic and tested positive after undergoing a routine swab before the meeting.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said the government will offer Covid-19 vaccines to all Brazilians, without cost or obligation, once health regulator Anvisa gives it scientific and legal approval.In a post on his Twitter account, Bolsonaro also said the economy ministry has pledged there will be no shortage of resources for everyone who wants a vaccine to get one.