Bedugul Coffee: Tuesday Morning Briefing: In COVID-19 milestone for West, Britain starts mass vaccination

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Britain starts mass vaccination
A 90-year-old grandmother became the world’s first person to receive a fully-tested COVID-19 shot, as Britain began mass-vaccinating its people in a global drive that poses one of the biggest logistical challenges in peacetime history.

Health workers started inoculating the most vulnerable with the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, with the country a test case for the world as it contends with distributing a compound that must be stored at -70C (-94F).

Russia and China have both already started giving domestically produced vaccine candidates to their populations, though before final safety and efficacy trials have been completed.

Trump to order priority access to vaccines for Americans
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order to ensure that priority access for COVID-19 vaccines procured by the U.S. government is given to the American people before assisting other nations, senior administration officials said.

The Trump administration is confident it will have enough vaccine to inoculate everyone who wants a vaccine by the end of the second quarter of 2021, one official said.

It was unclear why an executive order was needed to ensure that the vaccines would be distributed domestically first, though the order appeared to be designed in part to underscore Trump’s “America First” philosophy.

South Korea easing dry ice rules for vaccine transport
South Korea more than tripled the number of coronavirus vaccine containers aircraft can carry by easing limits on dry ice needed to keep them cold, the country’s deputy minister for aviation told Reuters.

South Korea said on Tuesday it signed deals to provide coronavirus vaccines for 44 million people next year, including from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen.

Airlines and governments round the globe are working on ways to establish cold chain delivery systems for vaccines, like Pfizer’s, which requires storage at below minus 70 Celsius, and Moderna’s, which needs to be kept at -20C.

Hong Kong to limit dining, close gyms
Hong Kong said the city would once again ban dining in restaurants after 6 p.m. and close all gyms and beauty salons, to curb a rise in coronavirus cases in the densely packed financial hub.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the government would also study additional relief measures for the industries affected by the latest restrictions that take effect, having been enforced and lifted repeatedly this year.

“The situation is very worrying. This wave is more complicated and more severe than the last wave. The confirmed cases are widely spread out,” Lam told reporters at a weekly media briefing.

Lions at Spanish zoo test positive
Four lions at Barcelona Zoo have tested positive for COVID-19, veterinary authorities said, in only the second known case in which large felines have contracted coronavirus.

They were tested after keepers noticed they showed slight symptoms and authorities are investigating how they became infected.

Track the spread with our live interactive graphic here.

Breakingviews - Corona Capital: Testing boom, Japan stimulus, EQT Japan cranks up its crisis stimulus to nearly $3 trillion, and EQT is taking advantage of undervalued stock. Catch up with the latest financial insights.

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Top stories

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate retired General Lloyd Austin to be his defense secretary, a person familiar with the decision said, and will publicly introduce the health team that will lead his administration’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Austin, 67, a former head of U.S. Central Command who oversaw forces in the Middle East under President Barack Obama, will be the first Black U.S. secretary of defense if the U.S. Senate confirms him.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there may be a time when Britain should call an end to post-Brexit trade talks, a day after agreeing to meet the European Commission head in a last-ditch attempt to break the stalemate. With just over three weeks before Britain completes its journey out of the bloc, Johnson is due to meet European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen in the coming days, after negotiators failed to close the gaps in talks.

New Zealand security agencies were almost exclusively focused on the perceived threat of Islamist terrorism before a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers last year, a report into the country’s worst massacre found. The Royal Commission of Inquiry also criticized police for failing to enforce proper checks when granting a firearms license to Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant, who released a racist manifesto shortly before the attack.

Ethiopia said that there were fighters from the rebellious northern region of Tigray who had not been defeated, after the government declared its military offensive there over. “There are a few remnants of the militia or special forces not yet controlled,” Redwan Hussein, spokesman of the government’s task force for the Tigray crisis, told reporters.

COVID SCIENCE

Phone cameras may replace lab equipment in COVID-19 testing
Researchers seeking faster, more convenient options for ramping up coronavirus testing are looking at a novel approach using a gene-editing technology called CRISPR and smartphone cameras in place of bulky laboratory equipment.

Coronavirus mutations linked with COVID-19 severity
Certain mutations in the genetic material of the new coronavirus have "substantial" associations with COVID-19 severity, and "collectively these variants are not rare," U.S. Air Force researchers have found.