New York Governor Cuomo is proposing a regulation that can make skipping the queue to be shot against the law

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State, speaks at a press conference in New York City on September 8, 2020.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing a law that will make it a crime to sell or give coronavirus vaccination shots to people trying to get ahead in line.

“This vaccine can be like gold to some people,” Cuomo said at a press conference Monday. “If there is fraud in the distribution – you let people stand in front of other people or friends or family or they sell the vaccine – you lose your license, but I think it should be criminal and I will propose a law to that effect. “

Cuomo said vendors could lose their license if they fraudulently administer vaccines, although the law would result in criminal penalties if allowed by state lawmakers. To date, healthcare workers and people living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been entitled to Covid-19 vaccines.

New York has already started administering Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, although the roll-out has been slower than planned. Cuomo urged state hospitals to give the vaccine faster. He said hospitals could face fines of up to $ 100,000 for failing to deliver their coronavirus vaccine allocation by the end of this week.

The state has received more than 774,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses but only administered 237,000 on Saturday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hospitals that have received Covid-19 vaccines in the past three weeks have only used about 46% of the doses on average, according to a Cuomo slide presented at the briefing. While some hospitals have given almost all of their doses, others have only used 15%, according to the governor.

“This is a management problem for the hospitals. They have to move the vaccine and they have to move the vaccine faster,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo said the New York Department of Health sent a letter to all hospitals on Sunday saying if they don’t use their vaccine assignments by the end of this week, they will be fined up to $ 100,000 and not given any more Assignments.

In the future, government hospitals will have to use their cans within a week of receiving them. Vendors who fall seriously behind could face further penalties, he said.

“You have the allotment, we want to have it in the arms of the people as soon as possible,” said Cuomo. “We’re going to use other hospitals that can manage it better.”

This is a developing story. Please try again later.

Why Debi Nova’s Grammy nomination is a message of hope for younger women

To the Debbie NovaHer Grammy nomination for 2021 came as a bit of a shock.

And no, it’s not just because she’s humble. Rather, the 40-year-old artist was unable to personally perform songs from her album 3:33, which was released in May, amid the coronavirus pandemic and the closing of large gatherings. “We didn’t really get feedback from the audience immediately,” she exclusively tells E! News in the video above. “Sometimes social media doesn’t set that bar … I think people vibrate with the album. They like it!”

After all, the 14-song tracklist perfectly captures the roller coaster of 2020. “Lyrically, it’s an album that talks about life cycles and how you sometimes have to go through the darkness to see the light again.” Debi explains the album, which mixes elements of Bachata, Bolero and Bossa Nova. “We have to go through winter to get through spring, and that’s what the album is about.”

Listed here are the primary points

Georgia voters mark their ballots on the first day of early voting in the U.S. Senate runoff election at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds December 14, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tami Chappell | AFP | Getty Images

In the final push ahead of the crucial U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia on Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats share this final message: the stakes can’t be higher, and the fate of either party’s agenda depends on the two races.

Reigning GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler face the challenges of Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, respectively. The races will determine which party controls the Senate and how much Democratic President-elect Joe Biden can set his legislative priorities.

“The future of the country is on the ballot here in Georgia,” Loeffler told Fox News on Tuesday.

If at least one Republican candidate wins their race, the GOP retains control of the upper chamber. If Ossoff and Warnock win, the Democratic caucus and GOP would each have 50 members, which would give elected Vice President Kamala Harris the casting vote.

The two races in the Senate went to a runoff, as no candidate received more than 50% of the vote on November 3rd. Recent polls point to close races in the runoff elections.

More than 3 million Georgians had already cast their votes at the end of the early parliamentary term, a record turnout in runoff elections in the state. State election data suggests Democrats have an advantage in turnout, while Republicans are hoping for a strong performance from their base on Tuesday.

Both parties are preparing their final voting results with high profile surrogates visiting the state before election day.

Outgoing President Donald Trump is slated to blunt 71-year-old Perdue and Loeffler (50) in Dalton on Monday to rally voters in rural, conservative northwest Georgia, where turnout has lagged. Biden plans to promote 33-year-old Ossoff and Warnock, 51, in Atlanta on Monday.

U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) speaks during a campaign rally on January 3, 2021 in Canton, Georgia. Loeffler continued his campaign for the upcoming runoff elections in a race against the Senate Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.

Alex Wong | Getty Images

Here are the most important issues that played out on the campaign path:

Supplying the base with energy

The candidates have focused the runoff elections on strengthening their bases to identify voters. For Republicans, it means reaching out to loyal Trump supporters, and for Democrats, it means rallying voters of the color and young voters.

Perdue and Loeffler have strongly allied themselves with Trump, including backing his baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

Trump has made Georgia one of his primary targets in his efforts to challenge Biden’s victory, despite two full hand counts of Biden’s victory in Peach State. The Georgia election results were confirmed for the race, and the state’s 16 electoral votes went to Biden. The president has attacked Republican leaders in Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for failing to turn the state’s election results upside down.

Just days before his planned campaign trip to Georgia on Monday, Trump threatened Raffensperger with a phone call and pressured election officials to find popular votes that would sway the census in his favor. Perdue and Loeffler demanded Raffensperger’s resignation in November.

Some GOP strategists fear that Trump’s continued unsubstantiated attacks on the integrity of Georgia’s electoral systems could deter his supporters from voting for the two Republicans.

Democratic Senate candidate Reverend Raphael Warnock speaks during a campaign rally on December 15, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images

Ossoff and Warnock have focused on mobilizing the diverse coalition in Georgia that led Biden to victory, including black and college-educated white voters, as well as young people, Asian Americans and Latinos.

“Vote,” Warnock said on Twitter on Sunday, “and we will build a new Georgia together.”

The Covid crisis

As the Covid crisis accelerates in Georgia and across the country, Ossoff and Warnock say Perdue and Loeffler used their positions of power for personal gain while the Georgians suffered.

Ossoff and Warnock accuse Perdue and Loeffler of insider trading, saying their opponents used private knowledge of the impending coronavirus pandemic received as senators in early 2020 to engage in advantageous stock deals.

“While [Perdue] He has enriched himself in office, buying shares in vaccine manufacturers and medical equipment. He’s been blocking relief for ordinary people who are suffering, “Ossoff said during a December 6 debate that Perdue declined to attend.

Perdue was interviewed about well-timed deals at the start of the pandemic, specifically about selling more than $ 1 million worth of stock in a financial analyst firm, Cardlytics, where he was once on the board. An investigation by the New York Times found that Perdue is the Senate’s most prolific stock trader, and that his 2,596 deals during his first term accounted for nearly a third of all Senatorial deals reported in the past six years.

Loeffler and her husband Jeffrey Spokesman, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and chairman and CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange holding company, also came under fire in March after up to $ 3 million worth of stocks were sold in the weeks leading up to market indices falling dramatically in value.

Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) are to the power of five when Perdue takes the stage to address a campaign rally on December 21, 2020 in Milton, Georgia.

Elijah Nouvelage | Getty Images

Perdue and Loeffler’s investment activity led the Justice Department to investigate, but prosecutors declined to bring charges. The incumbent senators have repeatedly denied allegations of illegal or improper stock trading.

Perdue and Loeffler have touted the CARES bill and the passage of the recently passed US $ 900 billion Covid Relief Act as evidence that they brought much-needed aid to the fighting Georgians during the pandemic. Democrats would have stopped efforts to pass an aid package earlier.

Ossoff and Warnock have accused the senators of not doing enough to help their voters. When Trump pushed for major stimulus checks of $ 2,000, the Democratic challengers took the opportunity to criticize Senate Republicans for speaking out against a larger direct payment earlier in the Covid relief negotiations. Perdue and Loeffler later broke up with many Senate Republicans to support the president’s call for $ 2,000 direct payments to Americans.

The Democratic candidates have positioned themselves as key to Biden’s ability to deliver on his anti-virus and relief agenda.

Republicans: “Firewall” against socialism

At campaign events and media appearances, Perdue and Loeffler relied on a main tactic from the republican playbook: to stir up fears of socialism and communism.

“We are the firewall to stop socialism,” Loeffler told Fox News last week. “We will save this country,” she said at a recent election rally.

“This is the last line of defense against this radical socialist agenda that the Democrats are trying to carry out,” Perdue told Fox News on Saturday.

They have tied Ossoff and Warnock to policies they believe are radical, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and defusing the police. The democratic candidates do not support this policy.

Most of their attacks were directed mainly against Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Republicans have used soundbytes from Warnock’s previous sermons to accuse him of being against guns, the military, the police, and Israel. The Warnock campaign has said that these clips have been taken out of context and do not reflect his stance.

Loeffler has tried to connect Warnock with a visit by the Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro in 1995 to a church in which he had been a youth pastor. Warnock said he never met Castro and PolitiFact found no evidence that he was involved in any decisions regarding appearance.

U.S. Senate Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff speaks to a group of supporters at a rally on December 19, 2020 in Savannah, Georgia.

Megan Varner | Getty Images

Perdue has alleged that Ossoff took money from the Chinese Communist Party and headed a $ 1,000 payment from a Hong Kong media company to Insight TWI, Ossoff’s documentary production company. The Ossoff campaign said the money was a merchant royalty check that the company received in Hong Kong after re-broadcasting an Insight TWI program.

Perdue has also since been scrutinized for his ties to doing business in China related to outsourcing manpower as top managers at companies like Sara Lee and Dollar General, a New York Times report found.

Democrats: “Health, Jobs and Justice”

Ossoff and Warnock highlighted a tripartite message during the runoff election.

“This is a movement for health, work and justice for the people,” Ossoff said at a campaign rally on December 5th in Conyers.

Its platform includes policies and programs that draw the line between the moderate and liberal wings of the Democratic Party. You support the expansion of Medicaid, but do not support the Medicare for All payer system. They want to invest in green energy and infrastructure, but don’t directly support the Green New Deal. They campaign for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and advocate reform of the criminal justice system, but reject calls from activists to disappoint the police.

Ossoff and Warnock have positioned themselves as a continuation of Biden’s agenda, a narrative that Biden himself and other Democratic representatives have also emphasized.

“I need two senators from this state who want to get things done, not two senators who are just getting in each other’s way,” Biden said at a rally in Atlanta on December 15th. “Send me these two men and we will control the Senate and change the lives of the people of Georgia.”

Echoing the democratic messages from the general election, Ossoff and Warnock told voters that after four years of Trump’s presidency and months of ongoing battles against the Covid health crisis, they represent a better future for the country and Georgia.

“At the moment it can be dark and stormy,” Warnock said on Twitter on Saturday. “But a new day is just around the corner.”

How Walmart plans to maintain healthcare

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, wants to be your doctor too.

In September 2019, known for its Everyday Low Prices, Walmart Health, a primary care clinic, launched in a Dallas, Georgia store. The doctor-run clinic, the first of its kind for the big box retailer, offers services such as x-rays, annual checkups, and dental exams.

As healthcare costs for consumers soar, Walmart, along with competitors CVS Health and Walgreens, is delving deeper into the healthcare business, opening clinics to receive a portion of the $ 3.6 trillion Americans spend on healthcare annually.

With more than 35 million people uninsured as of 2019, could Walmart Health’s low price tag be the future of healthcare in America?

Check out the video above to learn more.

See more:

A yr since Covid appeared in China, the world is battling the deadliest surge to this point

Alonso Lugo helps a patient attempt to stand inside the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) department at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, the United States, on December 30, 2020.

Callaghan O’Hare | Reuters

It’s been a year since Chinese health officials said they were investigating a small group of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause related to a fish market in Wuhan.

The new disease, later called Covid-19, would destroy the global economy, shuttle schools and small businesses, and hospitalize world leaders and millions of ordinary people.

The virus has now infected more than 85.1 million people around the world and killed nearly 1.9 million people – numbers likely lower than official figures, global health officials say.

“As people celebrated New Year’s Eve around the world, a new global threat emerged 12 months ago. Since that moment, the Covid-19 pandemic has claimed so many lives and massively destroyed families, societies and economies around the world.” World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a video address on Wednesday.

Coronavirus is still on the rise, but not as strong in countries that were forced into early lockdowns in early 2020 to help contain the disease. China has reported a weekly average of two Covid deaths per day, while the US reports an average of 2,637 daily deaths, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Three countries – the US, India and Brazil – account for nearly half of the world’s confirmed cases, according to Hopkins.

Hospitals in America, which have built an arsenal of new techniques to treat critically ill patients as the pandemic progressed, are still being overrun. Many face a shortage of health workers and space. In Los Angeles County, where demand for intensive care beds exceeds supply, at least one person dies from Covid every 10 minutes, government officials said on Wednesday.

In December alone, the deadliest month of the pandemic in the United States, more than 77,572 Americans died from the coronavirus. Now officials are pursuing a new, more contagious variant of the virus that threatens to worsen the situation in the country’s hospitals.

There is hope for the new year: vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna at unprecedented speed are making their way to the people, and more are on the horizon.

“I mean, from a public health perspective, we have really experienced significant pain, suffering and death,” said White House coronavirus advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, opposite NBC’s “TODAY” show on Thursday. “The good news is that science can and will help us through vaccination.”

[Read more: A timeline of the insidious path the coronavirus took around the world to kill more than 1 million]

Even then, Fauci predicted that if all goes well, there won’t be enough recordings for everyone by late March or early April next year. The initial doses of vaccine that have already been shipped have been slow so far.

The US has missed its target of vaccinating 20 million people against the coronavirus by the end of the year. According to the latest census by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 13.1 million doses of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s two-dose vaccines had been distributed nationwide as of Wednesday, but only about 4.2 million had been given to humans.

“Obviously it didn’t happen, and that’s disappointing,” Fauci said Thursday of the vaccine’s slow roll-out. “Hopefully the increasing momentum in the first few weeks of January will get us to where we want to be.”

Fauci said earlier this week that he was concerned that the outbreak could also continue into January when people travel home after Christmas. The Transportation Security Administration checked 1.3 million passengers at US airports on Sunday, the highest number since Covid suspended travel in mid-March.

The recent surge in cases has gotten so “out of control” that it is difficult for public health officials to isolate cases through contact tracing, the infectious disease expert told CNN on Tuesday. Now that the holidays are over, people should avoid gathering in groups to avoid January getting worse than December, he said.

“Hopefully, as we look forward to 2021, when we get well into the year with a combination of vaccines and proper public health compliance, we can end and destroy this thing, as we did at have done other outbreaks like polio and measles and other major infectious diseases, “Fauci said on Thursday.

Ceaser Emanuel speaks after his daughter referred to as him claiming he hit her (unique)

The gram got a little hot when Ceaser Emanuel of the Black Ink Crew was called by his 16-year-old daughter Cheyenne. She claimed that she had been hit by her father a few months ago and said that she would never forgive him or claim him as a moving father.

As previously reported, things got worse when Ceaser’s friend Suzette responded to the situation, saying Cheyenne had no respect, claiming Cheyenne’s mother tried to get her story back after she was kicked off the show.

With all the allegations and going back and forth on social media, Ceaser has remained silent about it until now. In an exclusive statement to The Shade Room, Ceaser said:

“My daughter Cheyenne and I don’t have a good relationship. However, I would never physically abuse them. I was just doing what many parents would have if their child crossed the line, and that is discipline, my child. I love my daughter and she is the only heir to my black ink tattoo parlors. It is difficult for her to get used to not being the only child and having to share her father. I do my best to make everyone comfortable in our new mixed family. I understand that we are on reality TV and our lives are constantly being set in public, but I hope everyone can respect my family’s privacy while we settle our differences. “

After Suzette replied to Cheyenne’s first post, Cheyenne went back to her Instagram to learn more about the alleged incident in which she claimed to have been beaten by her father.

She said, “The level of disrespect if I pull myself out of the shower and then hit myself while I’m naked is a problem, period !! I have no reason to make up a story. It’s a shame people think it’s okay to kick, hit, and stomp me like I’m a dog on the street because he’s on TV. “

Cheyenne’s mother, Crystal, also spoke about the situation, saying:

Would you like updates directly in your text inbox? Hit us at 917-722-8057 or Click here to take part!

TSR STAFF: Jade Ashley @ Jade_Ashley94

Nigeria’s $ 82 billion well being hole: buyers stand by

A security guard administers disinfectant to a visitor to a government hospital in Lagos on February 28, 2020.

PIUS UTOMI EKPEI | AFP via Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic has sharpened the lens of a significant health spending gap in Africa’s largest economy, and international investors are trying to fill the gap.

When it comes to health care, Nigeria lags behind its comparable African neighbors in terms of spending and access.

For example, Nigeria’s public health spending amounts to just 3.89% of GDP (gross domestic product) of $ 495 billion, compared to 8.25% in South Africa and 5.17% in Kenya, according to the latest available figures from the World Bank.

According to a recent report by real estate consultancy Knight Frank, Nigeria, it would take 386,000 additional beds and $ 82 billion of investment in healthcare real estate to hit the global average of 2.7 beds per thousand people.

According to the United Nations, Nigeria’s 206 million population is expected to nearly double by 2050, which would make Nigeria the third most populous country in the world.

All of this – especially in connection with the coronavirus pandemic – has sparked interest in this sector among foreign investors.

A Knight Frank poll of 140 global investors in June found that 80% are considering investing in African healthcare infrastructure in the face of the coronavirus crisis. This interest has mainly focused on hospital-related real estate and operations businesses in collaboration with domestic experts.

As in much of the African continent, Nigeria has managed to keep the number of coronavirus cases relatively low given the size of the population. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, 90,080 cases and 1,311 deaths were recorded on Monday morning.

International interest is growing

Even before the pandemic, African health goods had aroused broader interest. The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, partnered with the Health in Africa-II Investment Fund (IFHA-II) in November 2019 for a US $ 115 million acquisition vehicle for health care companies in the eastern and southern US to form continent.

European development finance organizations such as Swedfund, the Swedish development finance institution, have supported IFHA, along with Pfizer and the Stichting Social Investor Foundation for Africa, whose supporters include Aegon, Heineken, Shell and Unilever.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the Nigerian government has spent 100 billion naira ($ 254.6 million) on government credit facilities for healthcare, from pharmaceutical companies and product manufacturers to service providers, which it seems has piqued the interest of private investors. The Bank of Industry, a Nigerian development finance institution, is providing an additional 50 billion naira.

“There is a very compelling opportunity for the development of world-class healthcare facilities across Africa, particularly in Nigeria,” said Hafeez Giwa, managing partner at HC Capital Properties, which has begun investing in healthcare facilities in Nigeria.

Hafeez Giwa, managing partner at HC Capital Properties, has started investing in Nigeria’s healthcare infrastructure.

New markets media & intelligence

“Most of the public hospitals here were built over 40 years ago and only a handful of investments have been made since then,” Giwa said in a report released Monday by frontier market consultancy New Markets Media & Intelligence.

Tosin Runsewe, CEO of health investment firm AfyACare Nigeria, highlighted another possibility: Compulsory health insurance for federal employees would reduce insurance costs and the percentage of health costs covered could increase to 20% to 30% by 2030.

Currently, around 72% of household health care spending is out of pocket, compared to the sub-Saharan average of 35%, the Knight Frank report points out, and only 5% of health care is insured.

“If we could reach a critical mass of 40 to 60 million Nigerians with health insurance, the cost of this treatment could be covered by health insurance premiums of only about 20,000 naira ($ 50) a year, half the current average cost,” Runsewe said.

“There are a number of opportunities for investors to invest in private primary health clinics that can provide services at affordable costs.”

Commuters wearing a protective face mask walk on the streets of Lagos on March 26, 2020 to take preventive action against the spread of the new coronavirus COVIC-19 in Lagos.

Photo only

According to Giwa, HC Capital Properties invested in Nigeria because of both “extreme needs” and government initiatives that have made it easier to develop high quality assets that provide affordable care. He suggested that two types of investors are currently exploring these options.

“On the one hand, there are local institutional investors and local pension funds who, in the case of Nigeria, are naira investors and have no currency risk concerns,” said Giwa.

“On the flip side, there are developmental investors and institutions that are excited about the prospect of providing quality health care to low- and middle-income Nigerians.”

He believes the pandemic has resulted in a “permanent change in thinking” that places greater emphasis on the quality of home health care.

Currently, Nigeria is losing up to $ 1 billion a year to outbound health tourism among wealthier Nigerians due to inadequate access to the interior, according to a recently released PwC report.

The Trump conspiracy to steal the election that was simply fired at Home Republicans

Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican who does not support the election coup, has questioned the seating arrangements for House delegations in all Trump-denied states.

Kyle Cheney tweeted:

! Rep @chiproytx has challenged the seating arrangements for all House members from Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and other states challenged by Trump.

– Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 3, 2021

What Roy is doing here is to show that Republicans may unanimously support the seating arrangements of all members of the House of Representatives who appeared on the same ballot papers as Joe Biden in states where other Republicans want to challenge Wednesday.

– Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 3, 2021

Rep. Roy sends a message to his own party that they can’t have it both ways. House Republicans cannot claim the same results they voted for while contesting the presidential election results with the same vote.

The flaw in the Trump election fraud lawsuit has always been the common sense problem that if the President’s results are invalid in those states, then all of the results in the five swing states are also not valid and these members should not sit.

Just as it is impossible to be a little bit pregnant, so is it impossible for a choice to be a little bit illegitimate.

The Congress delegations will sit, but the consequences of this attack on democracy will haunt the putschists for a long time to come.

For more discussions on this story, join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC groups.

Follow and like PoliticusUSA on Facebook

Mr. Easley is the Founder / Executive Editor, White House Press Pool, and a Congressional Correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a bachelor’s degree in political science. His thesis focused on public order with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and professional memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association

UK launches AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine

Brian Pinker, 82, will receive the University of Oxford / AstraZeneca COVID-19 COVID-19 vaccine on January 4th, 2021 from Nurse Sam Foster at Churchill Hospital in Oxford, South West England. –

STEVE PARSONS | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON – UK has started rolling out the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University. This is another step in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

The country’s National Health Service (NHS) is the first in the world to use the push after it was approved for use in the UK by the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) last week. The NHS said 82-year-old Brian Pinker became the first person in the world to receive the bump on Monday morning.

The approval and use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are seen as a boon in the race against Covid-19 as it is cheaper than the alternatives developed by Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna.

In addition, unlike other vaccines, it can be stored, transported, and handled under normal refrigeration conditions (2 to 8 degrees Celsius or 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit) for at least six months.

When the vaccine was approved last week, AstraZeneca stated its goal of “delivering millions of doses in the first quarter” under its contract with the UK government to deliver up to 100 million doses in total.

As a two-dose vaccine, according to the agreement, it could vaccinate up to 50 million people in the UK of around 66 million people.

In a statement on Monday, the UK government said there are now more than half a million doses available, “with an additional ten million doses to be delivered over the coming weeks and months once batches have been quality checked by the MHRA.”

The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine complements a Covid-19 vaccination program launched by the UK back in December, when the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine launched with two doses. According to the government, more than a million people in the UK have already been vaccinated with the Pfizer shot. It was announced on Monday that more than 730 vaccination sites have been set up across the UK and that hundreds more will be opening this week.

As with the Pfizer vaccine, the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot will be introduced first for priority groups, including residents and employees of nursing homes, people over 80 and health and care workers, and then for the rest of the population in order of age and risk, including those who are extremely clinically vulnerable.

“Decisive moment”

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: “This is a pivotal moment in our fight against this terrible virus and I hope it gives everyone renewed hope that the end of this pandemic is in sight”.

Another vaccine may not come early enough for the UK, which is grappling with an increase in infections, largely due to a mutation in the virus that is making it easier to spread. Britain has now registered over 2.6 million cases of the virus and over 75,000 deaths, according to a record by Johns Hopkins University.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday that further restrictions on public life were likely as Covid-19 cases continue to rise.

On Monday, Hancock told Sky News that the UK cannot roll out the vaccine any faster than supply allows. However, experts agree that the UK needs to step up its vaccination program as soon as possible. Last week, a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded that the UK must vaccinate two million people a week to avoid a third wave of the coronavirus outbreak.

On Saturday, The Times newspaper anonymously quoted a “key member of the Oxford AstraZeneca team” as saying the drug company would increase production so that it would produce two million pounds each week by mid-January.

This goal is achievable, but challenging, says Dr. Andrew Freedman, Infectious Disease Reader at Cardiff University School of Medicine. He told CNBC on Monday that the speed of the rollout will depend on “the availability of the vaccine, vaccine production, but also its distribution and establishment of new vaccination centers and the recruitment of new vaccines”.

“It’s a goal, but it’s realistic and I think it can be achieved by the end of the month,” he told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe.

The most vulnerable are first vaccinated with shots initially taken in hospitals before the bulk of the shipments are sent to hundreds of doctor’s offices and nursing homes later in the week.

Somewhat controversial, the MHRA, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) and the UK’s four chief medical officers agreed to move the gap between the first and second dose of coronavirus vaccines that are now being given to the public . The change in strategy was to get most people protected in no time.

The British Medical Association said the decision to postpone the post-dose of the Pfizer vaccine and to cancel appointments for patients who had already been given the second dose was “grossly unfair” for thousands of high-risk patients. However, experts like Freedman said that with a vaccine like the Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate, a longer gap between doses could increase the effectiveness of the sting.

The government last week insisted that “the priority should be to give as many people in risk groups as possible their first dose, rather than delivering the required two doses in as short a time as possible”.

“Everyone will continue to receive their second dose within 12 weeks of the first. The second dose completes the course and is important for longer term protection,” he added.

Alexander Ludwig from Starvation Video games marries Lauren Expensive

The star of the Hunger Games Alexander Ludwig made things official with Lauren dear.

The actor took to Instagram on Sunday, January 3, to announce that the couple recently tied the knot during an intimate ceremony outside of Park City, Utah.

Alexander shared a photo of the newlyweds at the lodge at the Blue Sky Resort with the beautiful snow-capped mountains beyond. In his post he wrote that the only other people present were the officer, a photographer and their dog, sweet potato.

“My wife, my best friend, the future mother of my children, my everything. @Lurendear”, Alexander shared. “We decided to escape. It was such a crazy year, but it definitely put things into perspective. Life is too short. And I didn’t want to spend another day without calling this beautiful woman my wife.”

Alexander, who announced his engagement in November, said the couple plans to party with more people once the ongoing pandemic is under control.

“Of course, when things calm down, we’ll have a decent party with our friends and family, but for now the love of my life, our dog Yam, a yurt on a mountain top in the middle of nowhere, sounded like the perfect start. ” he went on.