Global vaccine campaign gains pace as Brazil approves jabs

The global COVID-19 vaccination drive gained pace on Jan. 17 as Brazil gave its first injections and India pushed on with its massive campaign, while European authorities sought to allay concerns about delays in supplies.

Brazil's health regulator gave the green light for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and China's CoronaVac to be used as the Latin American giant suffers a devastating second wave of the coronavirus.

Monica Calazans, a 54-year-old intensive care nurse in Sao Paulo became the first person in Brazil to receive the Chinese CoronaVac jab after the Anvisa watchdog's highly anticipated ruling.

Growing concerns over different strains of the virus have meanwhile prompted governments to tighten curbs in a bid to stem a global death toll that has already surpassed two million.

India's vaccination drive got off to a successful start on Saturday with more than 224,000 people receiving their first jabs and just three people hospitalized after side effects, the health ministry said Sunday.

The government plans to immunise some 300 million people out of its population of 1.3 billion by July - equivalent to almost the entire U.S. population.

In Europe, both France and Russia were gearing up for a key week in the vaccine effort.

Russia starts mass immunisations on Monday using its homegrown Sputnik V vaccine, while the French government is hoping to overcome fierce criticism of a sluggish rollout as it begins inoculating the over-75s.

Across the European Union there have been concerns that delays in the delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could further slow a campaign which critics have condemned as less agile than in the United States or Britain, a recently-departed EU member.

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