Reuters Health News Summary

The reports have come as China's vaccines, which are being rolled out to countries including Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey, have faced criticism in the West for insufficient data disclosure. Britain says well-placed to approve vaccines for future coronavirus variants Britain's medicines regulator will be ready and able to give approval to new versions of COVID-19 vaccines designed to counter new variants of the coronavirus that may appear, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.

Following is a summary of current health news briefs. UK hospitals like war zones as COVID-19 death toll approaches 100,000

Some British hospitals look like war zones with doctors struggling to cope with an influx of patients infected with COVID-19, the government's top scientific adviser said, as the death toll rose by a record daily amount towards 100,000. The United Kingdom's official death toll is 91,470 - Europe's worst figure and the world's fifth worst after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico. Deaths rose by a record on Tuesday. German COVID-19 fight hit by delay to Pfizer vaccine

Germany's most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia said on Wednesday it will delay the opening of new vaccination centres to Feb. 8 due to a temporary slowdown of deliveries of vaccines from Pfizer and its German partner Biotech. Pfizer started delivering shots in the European Union at the end of December but announced on Friday there would be a temporary impact on shipments in late January to early February caused by changes to manufacturing processes to boost output. French demand for COVID shots outstrips supply

Jeanne Becart, mayor of the Paris suburb of Garches, said public health officials told her to get ready to administer 1,200 COVID-19 vaccines a week. But for this week, the vaccination centre she set up has only been allocated 420 doses. "I am a bit angry," Becart said inside the vaccination hub off the town square, where over the course of Monday the 15 volunteers, nurses and doctors on duty between them vaccinated 90 patients.

Chinese media criticise Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, tout local shots Chinese state media outlets have run a series of articles criticising Western COVID-19 vaccines in the past week, including Pfizer's, while touting China-made vaccines as safer and more accessible. The reports have come as China's vaccines, which are being rolled out to countries including Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey, have faced criticism in the West for insufficient data disclosure.

Britain says well-placed to approve vaccines for future coronavirus variants Britain's medicines regulator will be ready and able to give approval to new versions of COVID-19 vaccines designed to counter new variants of the coronavirus that may appear, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday. Asked if the government would develop a new rapid pathway to allow approvals of new versions of vaccines to protect against such variants, Johnson said: "Yes indeed... we've been talking about that with the scientists over the last days and weeks intensively, just in the last few hours."

China steps up COVID-19 vaccine drive ahead of Lunar New Year When American restaurant worker Simon Sunwoo was offered a Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccine in Shanghai this month through his employer he jumped at the chance. "They wouldn't roll out something that could backfire on them," he said. "I feel like there's too many eyeballs on this for the Chinese to not be relatively sure."

Vatican starts vaccinating Rome's homeless against COVID-19 The Vatican began offering free vaccinations against COVID-19 to Rome's homeless on Wednesday. The vaccinations took place in the atrium of the Paul VI Hall, the huge auditorium where weekly papal general audiences take place but which has been largely disused because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pfizer vaccine appears effective against coronavirus variant found in Britain - study The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech is likely to protect against a more infectious variant of the virus discovered in Britain which has spread around the world, according to results of further lab tests released on Wednesday.

The encouraging results from an analysis of blood of participants in trials are based on more extensive analysis than those released by the U.S. drugmaker last week. EU reports nearly 300,000 excess deaths in 8 months of 2020

Around 297,500 more people died in the European Union between March and October last year compared with the same period in 2016 to 2019, according to EU data published on Wednesday. March 2020 was when the coronavirus pandemic began spreading across most of Europe and October is the last month for which data for all 27 EU member states are available. Biden leads observance of America's 400,000 COVID-19 dead on eve of inauguration

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday led a national memorial observance on the eve of his inauguration to honor the 400,000 Americans who have perished from COVID-19 during the 11 months since the novel coronavirus claimed its first U.S. life. The sundown commemoration came hours before President Donald Trump was due to leave the White House for the last time and hand over a country racked by the greatest public health crisis in a century, economic devastation and violent political upheaval.

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