MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th December, 2020) The death toll from the coronavirus infection in the world topped 1.783 million, over 81.7 million cases of infection were detected, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University, which tracks and compiles data from Federal and local authorities, media and other sources.
As of 20:00 GMT Tuesday, the number of cases globally is 81,713,263, including 1,783,146 fatalities.
The United States still has the highest case count in the world, with 19,427,750, including 336,529 fatalities.
It will take at least two years from the start of mass vaccination and the so-called Phase 4 of trials in order to properly evaluate the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, Paolo Bellavite, Italian author and immunopharmacology researcher, former professor of General Pathology at the University of Verona, told Sputnik.
Russian vaccines against the coronavirus should face no restrictions in Estonia if they are approved on the European Union level, prominent Estonian physician Arkadi Popov said.
Russian coronavirus vaccine EpiVacCorona does not harm the health of the embryo, the press service of the national public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said.
Belarus has become the first country in the world, apart from Russia, to start vaccinating its population against COVID-19 with Russia's Sputnik V vaccine, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said.
Kazakhstan plans to produce the Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine for domestic needs and there are no plans for its exports, a spokesperson for the medical and pharmaceutical control committee of the republic's health ministry told Sputnik.
The European Union will order another 100 million doses of the vaccine against the coronavirus disease, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said.
A female elderly worker at a German care home who was mistakenly injected with five times the recommended dose of the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine is still in the hospital, the Ostsee-Zeitung newspaper reported.
Spain will not reach herd immunity for a while even as mass vaccination is rolled out across the country, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.
UK military personnel have been drafted in to assist the mass COVID-19 testing program set to take place in the country's high schools and colleges as students head back after the Christmas vacation, the Ministry of Defense and the Department for Education said.
The first large supply of the coronavirus vaccine by the Pfizer/BioNTech duo has been flown to Greece on Tuesday, Greek public television channel ERT reported.
Romania will help Moldova tackle the coronavirus outbreak by supplying COVID-19 vaccines from its own reserve, Moldovan President Maia Sandu said.
In Estonia, 516 health workers were vaccinated against COVID-19 in the first two days since the beginning of the vaccination process, the health department said.
A Turkish Airlines jet will transport the first batch of China's SinoVac vaccine against coronavirus to Istanbul on Wednesday, the Turkish flag carrier said.
More than 115,000 people were administered a COVID-19 vaccine in Israel over the past day, taking the total number of the vaccinated to over 495,000, the country's health ministry said.
First Iranian volunteers on Tuesday received a domestic vaccine against COVID-19 as part of trials, media reported.
Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin has said that the government is planning to purchase at least 426 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine next year, to vaccinate 181 million of the country's 267 million citizens with the goal of establishing herd immunity in the country, the Jakarta Globe newspaper reported.
Peru is holding final negotiations with three foreign laboratories on purchasing vaccines against COVID-19, Peruvian Vice Health Minister Luis Suarez told state media Andina.
South Korea has agreed to buy 40 million coronavirus vaccine doses from US biotech company Moderna to inoculate 20 million people, presidential administration spokesman Kang Min-seok said at a briefing.
The South Korean drug safety agency has started a review of CT-P59 anti-coronavirus monoclonal antibody treatment developed by the Incheon-based biopharmaceutical giant, Celltrion, the Yonhap news agency reported.
Russia has registered 27,002 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, down from 27,787 the day before, bringing the total to 3,105,037, the federal response center said.
The United Kingdom posted a record increase of 53,135 COVID-19 cases across country and 414 deaths in the past 24 hours, the government's tally showed.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Tuesday that the upcoming winter holidays in city schools for students of grades 1-11 would be extended by a week as part of anti-coronavirus measures, until January 17. It also applies to colleges, supplementary education for children and sports schools in Moscow, he said.
Sobyanin said that older Muscovites, students and citizens with chronic diseases would be able to once again enjoy the right of some privileges, including low-fare or free city transport tickets, after being vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Egypt's Minister of Religious Endowments Mohamed Gomaa ordered the closure of a Cairo mosque for two weeks for violating precautionary measures put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
US energy behemoth ExxonMobil and banking giant Wells Fargo topped Forbes' list of biggest losers this year, losing $120 billion and $100 billion in capitalization respectively on the US stock market in 2020.
Most Germans do not believe that the coronavirus disease will be defeated next year, the dpa news agency has reported, citing a poll commissioned to UK polling company YouGov.
This year was one of the deadliest in Poland's post-war history, with more than 461,000 people dying in the 51 weeks of 2020, data published by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily showed.
The global response to the coronavirus pandemic has been undermined by the West's reluctance to cooperate constructively with other international powers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Sputnik.
Russia has conducted almost 90 million tests for the coronavirus disease since the spike in cases began, Anna Popova, the head of Russia's public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said.
The European Union's executive arm agreed that an $89.5 million coronavirus lifeline to Italy's flag carrier Alitalia did not break its competition rules.
The European Union calls on China to release journalist Zhang Zhan, who reported on the initial outbreak of the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan earlier this year, the EU External Action Service (EEAS) said.
The authorities of Uzbekistan in 2021 will allocate 3 trillion soums (about $300 million) for vaccination and the fight against COVID-19, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said.
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that there would be new pandemic-related challenges in 2021, such as mutations of the virus, and praised the role of science in overcoming them.
