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International News

Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine docs hacked from European Medicines Agency

Pfizer and BioNTech said documents relating to their vaccine candidate had been accessed, but that “no systems have been breached in connection with this incident.”

Cybercriminals have tried to attack several pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines including Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, AstraZeneca and South Korean laboratories, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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UAE says Chinese coronavirus vaccine 86% effective, offers few details

It wasn’t immediately clear if the announced results included only those taking part in the testing in the UAE or if they also include results from China and elsewhere.

The statement described the vaccine as receiving official registration without elaborating on what that meant. Emirati officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

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270 million people face starvation, says WFP as it receives Nobel Peace Prize

“Because of so many wars, climate change, the widespread use of hunger as a political and military weapon, and a global health pandemic that makes all of that exponentially worse — 270 million people are marching toward starvation,” David Beasley said from the WFP headquarters in Rome, upon receiving the Nobel medal and diploma.

“Failure to address their needs will cause a hunger pandemic which will dwarf the impact of COVID. And if that’s not bad enough, out of that 270 million, 30 million depend on us 100% for their survival,” he added.

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UN chief warns ‘vaccine nationalism’ is moving at full speed

The UN chief on Wednesday reiterated his call for vaccines to be treated as a global public good, available to everyone, everywhere on the planet, especially in Africa. And he appealed for 4.2 billion in the next two months for the World Health Organisation’s COVAX programme, an ambitious project to buy and deliver coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poorest people.

After a virtual UN meeting with the African Union, Guterres said at a news conference that financing COVAX is the only way to guarantee vaccines will be available in Africa and other developing areas.

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