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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH; News & Media Website based in Hong Kong
Japan will give free coronavirus vaccines to all of its residents under a bill passed Wednesday, as the nation battles record numbers of daily cases. The bill, which says the government will cover all vaccine costs for Japan’s 126 million residents, was approved by the upper house of parliament, having cleared the powerful lower house. The country has secured Covid-19 vaccines for 60 million people from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and for a further 25 million people from biotech firm Moderna. It has also confirmed it will receive 120 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Japan has seen a comparatively small Covid-19 outbreak overall, with about 2,100 deaths and 150,000 cases, and has not imposed the strict lockdowns seen elsewhere. But it is now facing a third wave of the disease, reporting record numbers of daily infections nationwide in recent weeks.
When pharmaceutical companies announced in November the promising results of their Covid-19 vaccines, airline shares around the world soared. But that may have been premature; it will take more than a vaccine to rescue the industry. The pandemic has laid bare the structural problems of airlines, and it is apparent that the crisis is deeper than the collapse in passenger numbers in the last 10 months. The industry needs a deep rethink and radical pivot.
China has successfully landed a probe on the Moon in an ambitious attempt to bring back the first lunar samples in four decades. Beijing has poured billions into its military-run space program, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and of eventually sending humans to the Moon. The Chang’e-5 spacecraft – named for the mythical Chinese moon goddess – touched down on the near side of the Moon on Tuesday, the China National Space Administration said. Chang’e-5’s goal is to collect lunar rocks and soil to help scientists learn about the Moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity. If the return journey is successful, China will be only the third country to have retrieved samples from the Moon, following the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s.
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from POLITICO
LEAST BIASED, HIGH, news and opinion website in Arlington, Virginia
Top Republicans and Democrats plan to ignore the president's eleventh-hour demand to repeal a legal shield for social media companies.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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from STAT
Media/News Company in Boston reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine
U.K. approves Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, putting pressure on FDA
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from STAT
Media/News Company in Boston reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine
U.K. approves Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, putting pressure on FDA
The United Kingdom on Wednesday became the first country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, a decision that will likely put pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to move swiftly to do the same. The vaccine is also the first to run the gauntlet of clinical studies normally required for approval. Russia and China have authorized vaccines without Phase 3 clinical trial data. The fact that the U.K. approved a vaccine developed by an American company — in partnership with a German one — before the United States could pour fuel on the already tense relationship between President Trump and the FDA, which has taken a more deliberative process in reviewing vaccine data.
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