Latin America received its first doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, with a shipment landing in Mexico City.Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard was on hand when the flight carrying the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed from Belgium.”Today is the beginning of the end of that pandemic,” Ebrard said.Mexico is scheduled to receive 1.4 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Officials on Wednesday did not say how large the shipment was, however, but said they planned to begin vaccinating health workers in Mexico City and Saltillo, in Mexico’s north, on Thursday.Other Latin American countries are expecting vaccine shipments or, as Argentina did on Wednesday, approving vaccines for use in their countries.Also Wednesday, researchers found that people who had contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, were much less likely to test positive again. Those people who developed antibodies were “at much lower risk” to get the disease again, and could remain virus free for up to six months or longer, the two studies found.Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, which conducted one of the studies, told the Associated Press that people who develop antibodies from natural infections develop “the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine. … It’s very, very rare” to get reinfected.The National Cancer Institute study involved more than 3 million people who had antibody tests. The NCI study found that only 0.3% of those who had antibodies later tested positive for the coronavirus, compared with 3% who lacked such antibodies, the AP reported.The second study, published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a much smaller group. It followed 12,500 health workers, 1,265 of whom had coronavirus antibodies at the start. The study found that only two health workers tested positive in the following six months, and neither person developed symptoms, AP reported.U.S. Army General Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer, said Wednesday that the U.S. government would distribute nearly 4.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines next week.By the end of the first week of January, Perna said, about 20 million vaccine doses will have been delivered throughout the United States.U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui warned, however, that it would take longer to administer the doses.”The commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available,” Slaoui said during a press call. “How fast the ramp-up of immunizations, the shots in arms, is happening is slower than we thought it would be.”Public data show that health care workers in the United States have received about 1 million shots so far, a small fraction of the total shipped. U.S. officials said there was a lag in vaccination data of several days, however.Chile’s Santiago international airport is employing sniffer dogs in detecting travelers with COVID-19.A team of golden retrievers and Labradors wear green “biodector” jackets adorned with red crosses.Passengers will be required to wipe their necks and wrists with gauze pads. Once placed in glass containers, the dogs, who have been trained to detect the coronavirus, will give a sniff.Dogs are being used in airports in the United Arab Emirates and Finland. A recent study found dogs can identify individuals who have COVID-19 with 85% to 100% accuracy.Chile’s Carabinero police trained the dogs.
…

Pfizer-BioNTech said Wednesday they will supply the United States with an additional 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine as the country struggles to contain surges in infections.The drug makers said they expect to complete the delivery by the end of July in a nearly $2 billion deal with the federal government.“Securing more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech for delivery in the second quarter of 2021 further expands our supply of doses across the Operation Warp Speed portfolio,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021.”On December 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use, clearing the way for the drug makers to supply the government with an initial 100 million doses.The agreement announced Wednesday stipulates the companies will deliver at least 70 million of the additional doses by June 30, with the remaining 30 million doses being delivered by July 31. The government can also purchase up to an additional 400 million doses.The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first of two to be approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, the other developed by rival Moderna, Inc. The first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine throughout the U.S. began December 13.The U.S. continues to lead the world in COVID-19 deaths, with nearly 323,000, and in infections, with more than 18.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease.Health care workers and nursing home residents have been among the first to be vaccinated. More than 600,000 people in the U.S. received their first doses as of Monday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require two shots to be fully effective. 
…

Pfizer-BioNTech said Wednesday they will supply the United States with an additional 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine as the country struggles to contain surges in infections.The drug makers said they expect to complete the delivery by the end of July in a nearly $2 billion deal with the federal government.“Securing more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech for delivery in the second quarter of 2021 further expands our supply of doses across the Operation Warp Speed portfolio,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. “This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021.”On December 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use, clearing the way for the drug makers to supply the government with an initial 100 million doses.The agreement announced Wednesday stipulates the companies will deliver at least 70 million of the additional doses by June 30, with the remaining 30 million doses being delivered by July 31. The government can also purchase up to an additional 400 million doses.The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first of two to be approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, the other developed by rival Moderna, Inc. The first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine throughout the U.S. began December 13.The U.S. continues to lead the world in COVID-19 deaths, with nearly 323,000, and in infections, with more than 18.2 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease.Health care workers and nursing home residents have been among the first to be vaccinated. More than 600,000 people in the U.S. received their first doses as of Monday, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require two shots to be fully effective. 
…

More than 170 people have died from yellow fever outbreaks in Nigeria this year, despite vaccines being available since 2004. A preference among some Nigerians for traditional, herbal medicine is part of the problem.  But experts say apathy to vaccines in rural areas is the biggest challenge, as Ifiok Ettang reports from Bauchi, Nigeria.Producer: Marcus Harton
…

Retail giant Walmart Inc. is facing a civil lawsuit from the Department of Justice alleging the company “unlawfully dispensed” controlled substances, including opioids “throughout the height of the prescription opioid crisis.” Walmart has pledged to fight the lawsuit. According to a news release, the DOJ alleges Walmart, which operates over 5,000 pharmacies nationwide, violated the Controlled Substances Act “hundreds of thousands” of times. The DOJ says Walmart “knowingly filled thousands of controlled substance prescriptions that were not issued for legitimate medical purposes or in the usual course of medical practice, and that it filled prescriptions outside the ordinary course of pharmacy practice.” The complaint further alleges that “as the operator of its distribution centers, which ceased distributing controlled substances in 2018, Walmart received hundreds of thousands of suspicious orders that it failed to report as required to by the DEA.” In combination, these failures “helped to fuel the prescription opioid crisis,” according to the DOJ. Penalties could be billions of dollarsIf found liable, Walmart could end up paying billions of dollars in civil penalties, with a maximum of $67,000 per unlawful prescription filled and $15,000 for each suspicious prescription it failed to report. “It has been a priority of this administration to hold accountable those responsible for the prescription opioid crisis. As one of the largest pharmacy chains and wholesale drug distributors in the country, Walmart had the responsibility and the means to help prevent the diversion of prescription opioids,” said Jeffrey Bossert Clark, acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Division, in a news release. “Instead, for years, it did the opposite — filling thousands of invalid prescriptions at its pharmacies and failing to report suspicious orders of opioids and other drugs placed by those pharmacies,” Clark said. “This unlawful conduct contributed to the epidemic of opioid abuse throughout the United States. Today’s filing represents an important step in the effort to hold Walmart accountable for such conduct.” In a statement, Walmart said the lawsuit “is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context” and that the DOJ is attempting “to shift blame from DEA’s well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescribing opioids in the first place.” According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in 2018 an average of 128 people in the U.S. died daily from opioid overdose. The cost of the crisis was estimated to be $78.5 billion per year.  
…

More than 170 people have died from yellow fever outbreaks in Nigeria this year, despite vaccines being available since 2004.  A preference among some Nigerians for traditional, herbal medicine is part of the problem. But experts said apathy to vaccines in rural areas is the biggest challenge.Nigerian car washer Jonathan Sale caught yellow fever from mosquito bites while in secondary school, 23 years ago, before a vaccine was available to treat the viral disease.“When I had that sickness, my lips turned yellow, and my tongue, my eyeball became yellowish. And I was vomiting yellow, yellow, yellow,” Sale said. “I was thinking I was going to die, and God saved me. I went to the hospital and they gave me drips and some drugs.” Nigeria has had the yellow fever vaccine since 2004 and offers it free for children.But since 2017, outbreaks of yellow fever have left scores dead and many others suffering.Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, the executive chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency, said many parents fail to get their children vaccinated.“We now did a small survey and found out that out of the people we sampled, half had not taken the vaccination,” Rilwanu Mohammed said. “The children sampled were under the age of five, and half had not taken the vaccination.”Traditional medicineWhile apathy among parents is the main challenge to vaccines, some Nigerians also opt for traditional medicine instead, like Ahmadu Mohammad, who claims he was cured from yellow fever by visiting the community traditional healer.Mohammad said that people use with herbal medicine and don’t often go to a hospital. He said the treatment is a syringe placed in fire, and once the needle turns red, the herbal doctor prays on the syringe before piercing it into the chest. He said that is the gift God has given the herbal doctor.Aisha Rufai is an immunologist in the city of Jos. He believes more Nigerians are willing to get the yellow fever vaccine, which lasts a lifetime.“There is great awareness now, almost everybody is aware of immunization now, so that of traditional, you’ll find out that it is a very minute number of people that go for traditional,” Rufai said. The Nigerian federal government plans to carry out a massive yellow fever immunization campaign across five high-risk yellow fever states starting mid-January.
…

Major climate and clean energy measures are tucked inside the package of $1.4 trillion in annual spending to fund the government and $900 billion to provide COVID-19 relief approved by Congress late Monday.  It’s a rare bit of bipartisan agreement on an issue that has been mostly stalled in Congress while global temperatures rise and climate change-driven disasters pile up. Environmental groups said the initiative is a start, but much more needs to be done. FILE – A worker installs solar panels on a roof at Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles, California, Aug. 8, 2019.The measure provides short-term tax breaks for solar and wind power and for technology to remove planet-warming carbon dioxide from power plant and industrial emissions, known as carbon capture and sequestration.  It phases down the use of extremely powerful greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)  in cooling systems. Clean-energy research and development get a funding boost as well.  In all there is roughly $35 billion of new funding for renewable technology and energy efficiency in the legislation, according to advocate groups. “Over the last few years, we found a great deal of cynicism that a bill like this could actually get done,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president of policy Marty Durbin said in a statement. “But passage of this bill will prove that there is common ground on which all sides of the debate can come together.” Durbin described the bill as “truly historic — setting up the biggest action Congress has ever taken to address climate change, and the first energy bill in 13 years.” Greenpeace USA Democracy Campaign Director Folabi Olagbaju called it “a step in the right direction but simply not good enough to meet the magnitude of the moment.” Bruce McDougal prepares to defend his home as the Bond Fire burns though the Silverado community in Orange County, California, Dec. 3, 2020.2020 is on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year on record. Scientists say dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions need to happen worldwide, and soon, to avoid catastrophic global warming. Congress has done little to address the problem since 2010, when a bill aiming to charge polluters for emissions failed in the Senate.  The new spending bill extends an existing tax credit that benefits solar power by two years. It extends a tax credit for land-based wind power by one year and creates a new credit for offshore wind. A credit for carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that is only deployed on commercial scale at a handful of facilities, gets a two-year extension.  The hydrofluorcarbon chemical phase-down brings the United States in line with a United Nations treaty signed by 197 other countries. Business groups supported it, but the measure faced opposition from a few key Republicans concerned about stricter state and local measures creating a patchwork of regulations. The new measure bars them from regulating HFCs for five years. The wide-ranging spending bill includes a potluck of other measures environmentalists back, including programs to reduce diesel pollution, transition to electric school buses and weatherize low-income homes.  It also reverses Trump administration cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and climate change programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.   
…

An organization run by women in Senegal, ElleSolaire, was supplying solar panels to light up country homes that are off the power grid. But with the outbreak of the coronavirus, and health care stretched, ElleSolaire has switched to providing the panels to underequipped, remote health clinics, where women are often forced to give birth in the dark.   Senegalese women adorned in colorful wax fabric clothes laugh and dance around in the village of Tiamene Diogo. They are celebrating because the local clinic that provides prenatal care will soon have electric lights and fans.    Head nurse Issaka Dia says with more than 2,500 people from six villages, there are about eight births each month, many of which he attends to at night using only the light from his mobile phone. He says he’s so happy. He feels like they can now work day and night, even in the heat.  The remote region in western Senegal is off the electric grid, so the clinic will be powered by the sun.      Since 2018, the woman-run ElleSolaire has been installing solar power in rural households.   With the coronavirus pandemic stretching health care, the company began equipping remote clinics.    Kelly Lavelle is the founder and executive director. “We’ve been just amazed at the reception,” said Lavelle. “The reception we’ve seen today is a point in case. It’s sad in a way that we’ve had to wait for COVID to hit for us to stop and think about the health clinics. But I’m really pleased that we’ve managed to pivot this into an opportunity.”  The organization also provides new skills for women like Jeanne Thiaw, ElleSolaire’s women’s coordinator. She used to scrape by with child care and cleaning jobs.   She says that although she could pay the rent before, she could not feed her family because she didn’t have the means.   Since the onset of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, Thiaw and her co-workers have installed solar-powered lights, fans, and mobile phone chargers at 23 remote clinics.    More than one million Senegalese lack access to power, according to USAID, and the World Health Organization says rates of maternal mortality are high.    Oumar Samb is a project evaluator with Senegal’s Ministry of Women, Family and Child Protection.   He says when women arrive to give birth in the night or in the day and all the machines are down, it’s obviously a danger for the woman in labor and for the newborn. Access to solar energy for these rural women can be lifesaving, he says.   And that, say the women, is progress worth celebrating.     
…

South African scientists say new variant of COVID-19 virus is causing resurgence of cases
…

U.S. officials are considering a requirement for all travelers from Britain to offer proof they have tested negative for COVID-19.News outlets say the White House coronavirus task force met Monday and discussed crafting a rule that passengers prove they have taken a negative test within 48 or 72 hours before leaving Britain.The proposed rule comes as more than 40 countries have suspended travelers from Britain in response to a dramatic rise of infections because of a new strain of COVID-19 sweeping across southern Britain.Britain Blockaded: Dozens of Countries Impose Travel Ban Over Coronavirus Mutation France bans all passenger and accompanied freight from Britain, raising fears of supply shortages ahead of Brexit The U.S. has not restricted flights from Britain, however, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he has asked airlines flying into the state from Britain to make all passengers take a COVID-19 test before they get on the plane. Three airlines, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and Delta Airlines, have agreed to Gov. Cuomo’s request.In the western U.S., Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington state Monday ordered a 14-day quarantine for all travelers entering the state from Britain and South Africa, where a similar mutation of COVID-19 has been identified.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday it is possible the new variant of the novel coronavirus is already in the United States.The head of German-based pharmaceutical company BioNTech says the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with U.S.-based counterpart Pfizer is “highly likely” to work against the new strain.  But Ugur Sahin told reporters in Berlin if necessary, the vaccine could be modified and distributed within six weeks.  The European Union authorized use of the Pfizer-BioNTech cross the 27-nation bloc vaccine on Monday, with the first inoculations to begin on December 27. Hans Kluge, the European chief of the World Health Organization, says the agency will convene a meeting of members to discuss strategies to counter the new COVID-19 variant, but did not give a date.  WHO cautioned Monday against raising a major alarm over the new strain, saying there is no evidence it is more lethal than any known existing strains, and that such mutations are a normal part of a pandemic’s evolution.  Meanwhile, the world’s longest streak without a local coronavirus infection has been broken.  Taiwanese health authorities say a woman in her thirties has tested positive after coming into contact earlier this month with a New Zealand-born pilot who was infected while traveling overseas.   The woman is Taiwan’s first locally transmitted COVID-19 case since April 12 — a stretch of 253 days.  Taiwan has been pointed to as a success story in how to respond to the pandemic, with just 766 total cases and just seven deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  The island began checking on passengers on flights from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic began, in the early days of the outbreak for fever and pneumonia symptoms. And Antarctica has lost its designation as the last continent on Earth without a COVID-19 infection.  At least 36 people stationed at a Chilean research base in the icy continent recently tested positive for the novel coronavirus, including 26 members of the Chilean army and 10 civilian contractors.   The Vatican says it is “morally acceptable” for Roman Catholics to receive vaccines developed using tissue from aborted fetuses.      The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church’s doctrinal oversight office, issued a statement Monday granting permission for Catholics to take such vaccines because it does not “constitute formal cooperation” with the means in which the tissue was obtained.  The office also said it is not always possible to obtain vaccines that do not pose an ethical dilemma.           
…

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden received a COVID-19 vaccination on live television Monday to convince Americans that the inoculation is safe. “I’m ready,” Biden told a nurse at a hospital in Newark, Delaware, before being injected Monday with a vaccine developed by drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech. “I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it’s available to take the vaccine. There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. His wife, Jill Biden, was administered a dose of the vaccine hours earlier at the same hospital, which is near the couple’s Delaware home. Other U.S. leaders received their vaccinations last week, including Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  U.S. President Donald Trump, who was hospitalized with the coronavirus in October, has not said when he intends to get the vaccination. Monday also brought the arrival of a vaccine produced by Moderna to sites across the country.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the Moderna vaccine emergency use authorization Friday.  The development significantly boosts U.S. vaccination efforts, with the Moderna vaccine joining the Pfizer-BioNTech one that was approved earlier this month.  The priority for the mass vaccination campaign is front-line health workers and those in nursing homes, addressing some of the most vulnerable populations before expanding to others.  A federal advisory board said Sunday the next group should be people older than age 75, as well as those working in essential fields such as firefighters, teachers and grocery store employees.  The United States has seen a surge in infections during the past two months, and in the past week has added an average of more than 215,000 new cases each day.  The U.S. leads the world with more than 318,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the global outbreak. 
…

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is studying variants of the coronavirus found in Britain and South Africa, adding there is no evidence they are deadlier or more severe than any more common strains, and the best thing people can do is work to suppress transmission.During the agency’s regular briefing at its Geneva headquarters, officials said they continue to receive data about the variants and there are reports from Britain the new strain there can be transmitted more easily.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters they are working with scientists to understand how these genetic changes affect the way the virus behaves. He stressed this is nothing new, saying, “Viruses mutate over time; that’s natural and expected.”Tedros said suppressing the spread of the virus as quickly as possible can help the most.“The more we allow it to spread, the more opportunity it has to change,” he said, adding that all governments and citizens should take all necessary precautions to limit transmission.WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove attends a news conference at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, July 3, 2020.WHO technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove was quick to add there is no link between the variant in South Africa and the one in Britain and that they are different. She said they have just shown up at the same time.What has not changed, Van Kerkhove said, is the method by which the virus spreads, and social distancing is still the best way to avoid it.“The virus spreads between people who are in close contact with another,” she said. “That’s still the same. There are detailed investigations that are under way, and we will let you know if anything in that space changes. But the virus likes people who are in close contact with one another.”Meanwhile, Michael Ryan, the WHO’s health emergencies program executive director, said that at this stage, there’s no evidence that “this virus will change the severity, the diagnostics or the value of vaccines going forward.”
…

China has announced it will allow access by international scientists to its massive radio telescope — the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in southwestern Guizhou province. It is now the largest and only instrument of its kind in the world following the recent collapse of a Puerto Rico-based observatory.Ahead of the announcement, Chinese officials last week allowed international journalists access to the instrument, built in a natural basin between mountains in a remote area of Guizhou.  Work on the FAST began in 2011 and it started full operations in January this year, at a cost of about $170 billion. The telescope specializes in capturing the radio signals emitted by celestial bodies, in particular pulsars — rapidly rotating dead stars.  The work it does is even more crucial since the December 1 collapse of the U.S.-owned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. That radio telescope — second in size to FAST — was destroyed when its suspended 900-ton receiver platform came loose and plunged 140 meters onto the radio dish below.  FAST’s chief inspector of operations, Wang Qiming, told the French news agency, AFP, a team had visited Arecibo and drew a lot of inspiration from that structure. But Chinese officials say FAST is two- to three times more sensitive than the Arecibo instrument and has five to ten times the surveying speed. Plus, it can rotate, allowing access to a wider area of the sky.Officials say they hope to open access to the telescope and its unique capabilities in 2021. Scientists using the Arecibo Observatory won a 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work proving the existence of gravitational waves by monitoring a binary pulsar. China hopes to attract similar scientific talent to the FAST telescope. 
 
…

With inoculations of a second COVID-19 vaccine set to begin Monday across the United States, federal health regulators have issued new guidelines of who should be prioritized in the next round of inoculations.An advisory panel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted 13-1 Sunday to make Americans 75 and older, along with so-called “frontline essential workers,” the first in line to receive coronavirus vaccines. The essential workers  include first responders such as police and firefighters, teachers, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, public transportation employees, and workers in food and agriculture, manufacturing and grocery stores.The panel’s vote came as hundreds of delivery trucks began fanning out across the nation to deliver nearly 6 million doses of the vaccine developed by U.S.-based drug maker Moderna and the National Institutes of Health.Moderna Begins COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution in US The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Moderna for emergency useThe new vaccine shipped out just two days after the Food and Drug Administration granted it emergency use authorization, which itself came just days after agency regulators confirmed Moderna’s claims of the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.The Moderna-NIH vaccine adds to the 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipped last week that began the vaccination effort in the U.S., starting with frontline health care workers and nursing home residents.U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, will receive the Pfizer vaccine Monday during a publicly televised event. The 78-year-old Biden is at high risk of contracting the virus due to his age. A spokesman for Biden’s transition team says Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, will be vaccinated sometime next week.Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, along with Surgeon General Jerome Adams, received the Pfizer vaccine during a televised event last Friday in Washington.COVID Travel and Transport Bans Prompt Emergency Meeting Monday in BritainMeasures triggered by spread of new coronavirus variant in the country as scientists look for evidence whether it is deadlierMeanwhile, a growing list of nations banned most travel from Britain in response to a dramatic rise of infections due to a new strain of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, sweeping across southern Britain.At least 14 European nations, including Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands, announced a ban on all flights from Britain on Sunday. France also banned all travel from Britain at the iconic English Channel, forcing Britain to shut down all passenger and freight travel at the crucial port city of Dover, leaving scores of trucks carrying tons of goods stranded.Other nations have also banned flights from Britain, including Canada, which announced Sunday night that it was halting flights from Britain for 72 hours. Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Iran and Israel are among the other countries who have also announced a ban on flights from Britain.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to hold an emergency meeting of his Cabinet Monday to discuss the travel bans. Johnson announced new restrictions for both London and southern Britain on Saturday, including the closure of all nonessential businesses, such as gyms and hair salons, a limit on the number of people gathering indoors for the upcoming Christmas holidays, and a ban on nonessential travel.As the continent struggles to blunt the spread of the new COVID-19 variant, the European Union’s drug regulation agency is meeting Monday to decide whether to grant emergency authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) was scheduled to meet on December 29 to discuss the vaccine, but it moved it a week earlier under heavy pressure from Germany and other EU nations. If the EMA grants emergency use as expected, the first vaccinations could begin December 27. French Health Minister Olivier Veran announced Monday during a television interview the country will begin vaccinations that day, beginning with “the most vulnerable among us first of all.”South Korean health authorities reported 24 COVID-19 related deaths Sunday, its biggest single-day death toll since the start of the pandemic. South Korea now has a total of 698 deaths out of 50,591 total infections, including 926 new cases on Sunday.The South Korean capital Seoul and the surrounding areas of Gyeonggi Province and Incheon city have issued an order prohibiting gatherings of five or more people effective Wednesday and lasting until January 3.And in Australia, a cluster of COVID-19 infections in Sydney’s northern beaches has risen to 83 after 15 new cases were detected on Sunday. The new cases were discovered after health authorities in New South Wales province tested a record 38,578 residents in Sydney. The northern beach suburbs have been placed under a strict lockdown until Christmas Eve. 
…

As a second vaccine against the novel coronavirus is being rolled out across the United States ahead of the Christmas holiday, Britain is shutting down out of concern that a new mutation of the virus is highly contagious. VOA’s Michelle Quinn has more.
…