BIONTECH

Germany will soon authorize the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for people over the age of 65, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday, the same day Belgium authorized its rollout to seniors.

The countries - both criticized for the slow pace of their inoculation drives - had previously said there was insufficient data about the effect of the vaccine on older age groups.

Ljubljana – Slovenia is planning to start mass vaccination of teachers against Covid-19 next week, Jelko Kacin, the coordinator for the logistics of mass vaccination, announced as he visited a vaccination point in Ljubljana on Wednesday.

South Korean authorities are investigating the deaths of two people, both with pre-existing conditions, who died within days of receiving AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine.

The chairman of the National Committee for the Coordination of Immunisation Activities against SARS-CoV-2, Valeriu Gheorghita, informed on Tuesday, that until March 1st, at 18:00, there were a total of 946.781 people vaccinated, of whom 618.241 received two doses.

The popular Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine against coronavirus might be a tad less effective on people suffering from obesity, a new study has revealed.

A group of Italian researchers have discovered that the healthcare workers who were injected with the Pfizer vaccine, and are obese were not able to produce as many antibodies as the other healthy healthcare workers.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will honor scientists Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci with the country's Order of Merit for their work, his office announced.

Steinmeier will personally present the Federal Republic's Great Cross with Star to Şahin and Türeci at a ceremony which will be held at the Bellevue Palace next month.

Another 214,110 doses of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine will be delivered to Romania on Monday, by air, at the airports in Otopeni, Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara, according to a press release of the National Committee for Coordination of Activities on Vaccination against COVID-19 (CNCAV), sent to AGERPRES on Sunday.

Another 156,000 new vaccination places against COVID with the vaccine produced by Pfizer/BioNTech will be allocated, starting with March 1, to people who are in the second phase of immunization, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Health Andrei Baciu told AGERPRES. According to him, the appointments for these places will start on Saturday. "This is good news.

There is no new coronavirus variant that originated in Turkey, while the rate of infections related to the U.K. strain is rising in the country, the country's health minister said on Feb. 25. 

EU leaders meet on Feb. 25 under pressure to speed up Europe's coronavirus vaccine rollout, and divided over border closures and what introducing vaccine travel certificates could mean.