Health News Roundup: Allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccine; sequencing to trace cases within hours and more

Watch the video below for the top health news stories of December 10 from all across the world.

Devdiscourse brings you the top health news stories of the day from all across the world.

COVID-19 vaccine supply in Americas to take many months -WHO

Latin American countries will not get enough COVID-19 vaccines for months when they come available and they should develop immunization plans focusing first on health workers and the elderly, the World Health Organization advised on Wednesday. Its regional branch for the Americas, PAHO, warned that vaccines being developed now will take months to arrive and supplies might not become sufficient until after 2021.

U.S. official says people at risk for severe allergic reactions not expected to take COVID-19 vaccine

A top U.S. official said on Wednesday that Americans with known severe allergic reactions may not be candidates for Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine after the United Kingdom said two people with severe allergies experienced serious reactions to the Pfizer vaccine on the first day of widespread vaccinations in the country. "My expectation is... that tomorrow this will be a part of the consideration and as in the UK, the expectation would be that subjects with known severe allergic reactions should not take the vaccine until we understand exactly what happened here," said Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for U.S. efforts on coronavirus vaccines.

Canada approves first COVID-19 vaccine, expects inoculations next week

Canada on Wednesday approved its first COVID-19 vaccine and said initial shots will be delivered and administered across the country starting next week, while every Canadian will be able to be inoculated as early as the end of September. Canada is the third country after Britain and Bahrain to give the green light to Pfizer Inc's vaccine, developed with Germany's BioNTech SE.

Hackers steal Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine data in Europe, companies say

U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said on Wednesday that documents related to their development of a COVID-19 vaccine had been "unlawfully accessed" in a cyberattack on Europe's medicines regulator. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), responsible for assessing and approving medicines and vaccines for the European Union, said hours earlier it had been targeted in a cyberattack. It gave no further details.

Australian scientists develop genome sequencing to trace COVID-19 cases within four hours

Australian scientists said they have developed a rapid genome sequencing method that would cut the time taken to trace the source of coronavirus cases to within four hours. Genome sequencing can help scientists monitor small changes in the virus at a national or international scale to understand how it is spreading, and provide insight into how different cases are linked.