Operation Warp Speed

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said it plans a cost-cutting operation if its co-developed with BioTech COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment for the coronavirus continue to underperform in the coming months due to falling demand.

The COVID pandemic is an unprecedented challenge to inoculate billions around the world. While the drugs are badly needed in the near term, some countries already are developing piecemeal plans reflecting the lack of any coherent global strategy to cover vaccination in a pandemic, which the world needs.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday the United States would have sufficient vaccine supply by the end of May to inoculate the entire US adult population.

"We're now on track to have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May," said Biden -- who had previously forecast it would take until the end of July to amass that many doses.

The company's request followed a report on January 29, which states that global clinical testing has shown that the effectiveness of this vaccine in preventing coronavirus infection amounts to 66 percent.
The vaccine, which is given in a single dose, could speed up delivery and simplify the U.S. immunization campaign, according to Reuters.

European Union industry commissioner Thierry Breton was put in charge of a new vaccine production task force on Thursday after the EU executive came under fire over delays with deliveries of vaccines against the coronavirus.

Sanofi will fill and pack millions of doses of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine from July in an effort to help meet the huge demand for the US drugmaker's shots.

The French company will aim to help supply more than 100 million doses of the vaccine this year from its German plant in Frankfurt, CEO Paul Hudson told Le Figaro newspaper on Tuesday.

Greece has received the first batch of coronavirus vaccines developed by Moderna Inc.

Coming on top of ongoing distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech shots, the country received the first 8,000 doses of the vaccine, approved for use by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) last week, and expects a total of 20,000 doses to be delivered by the end of January.

More than 1 million people in England now have coronavirus, the British government said, as medics race to vaccinate the most vulnerable against the rapidly spreading disease.

Peaking case rates from the new virus strain mean one person in every 50 in England now has Covid-19, while in London one in 30 is infected, official survey results showed.

Britain on Wednesday became the first country to approve AstraZeneca and Oxford University's home-grown UK Covid-19 vaccine, adding an easy-to-manage shot to the arsenal of a nation desperate for pandemic relief.

The European Union will buy an extra 100 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the total from the two firms to 300 million doses, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.