Covid UK news: 800,000 vaccine doses likely by year end as infection rates drop across most of England

The Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has said that his country will start producing doses of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine this month.

Kazakhstan, which is also developing its own vaccine, plans to start vaccinations in early 2021. 

Norway hopes to use three promising vaccines - developed by AstraZeneca, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech - to inoculate its population against Covid-19, the country’s health minister has said. 

Oslo is set to receive 2.5 million vaccine doses in the first three months of 2021, which will be administered to 1.25 million people, almost a quarter of the Norwegian population. 

People living in Wales will be given a “credit-card sized” token once they have received their coronavirus vaccination, the Welsh health minister has said. 

Vaughan Gething said the ID cards would act as proof of inoculation and would also help to remind people to return for their second dose. 

Plans for so-called “immunity passports” have not been announced in other parts of the UK. 

Roughly a third of the Spanish population would be happy to take a coronavirus straightaway, while 55.2 per cent of people would prefer for the effects to become known. 

However, 8.4 per cent of respondents said they would not take any Covid-19 vaccine. 

The findings were part of a study carried out by the pollster CIS in late November. 

After a long wait, the US will at last roll out a contact tracing scheme for international arrivals. 

The initiative from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Delta Air Lines will begin on 15 December. 

Passengers on-board Delta aircraft will be asked to voluntarily submit information including their name, number and address during their stay in the US. This will then passed securely to the CDC. 

Helen Coffey, The Independent’s deputy head of travel, has the details: 

The Swedish government has announced that 600,000 elderly people in nursing homes as well as staff and the patients’ relatives will receive the country’s first vaccinations. 

Stockholm is expected to received five out of the six vaccines bought under the EU’s common procurement scheme, with the Pfizer vaccine likely to be approved later this month by the European regulator. 

Primark lost £430m of sales during the national lockdown in England and restrictions in the rest of the UK, France, Belgium and Austria.

The cut-price fashion retailer had previously forecast sales would be down £375m. It has re-opened stores in England, France, Belgium and the Republic of Ireland in the past week with extended opening hours. Eleven stores are to open 24 hours a day to try to make up for lost sales in the run-up to Christmas.

Shoppers queued outside some branches ahead of the re-opening but 34 sites remain closed including all stores in Northern Ireland and Austria.

The Independent’s business reporter Ben Chapman has the latest:

According to the Office for National Statistics, an estimated 521,300 people in England had coronavirus from 22-28 November, which is a fall of more than 100,000 from the week before. 

Sky News have published a clip providing a little more detail over the figures.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney has criticised Donald Trump for what he called a lack of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, labelling the president’s response to Covid-19 a “great human tragedy”.

Mr Romney, the party’s defeated 2012 presidential candidate, lamented that the pandemic has become a “political issue” in an interview with CNN, adding that people are “unfortunately dying“ because the message was not made clear to the public.

“Well, this [coronavirus] hasn't been the focus of his rhetoric, apparently, and I think it's a great human tragedy, without question,” Mr Romney said when asked about the president’s attention on making claims about election fraud.

Shweta Sharma has more:

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on Friday the agency will move quickly to review a Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine and hopes it will make a decision this month.

Mr Hahn declined to give a specific timeline of how long an approval of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine would take, saying only that the FDA would move “very quickly” after a vaccine advisory committee meets on 10 December.

Many federal officials are expecting a vaccine approval within days of that meeting, though one FDA official recently said an approval decision could take weeks.

Reuters