Coronavirus live updates: Canada health regulator approves Pfizer vaccine

India's Covid-19 active caseload has fallen below 4% of the total infections reported so far, while the new recoveries outnumbering the daily new cases has improved the national recovery rate to 94.59% as on date, the Union Health Ministry said. The active cases have drastically declined to 3.83 lakh. The total positive cases of the country are 3,83,866 and comprise 3.96% of the total caseload

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine would help the country overcome the virus but it would be a long process before it was totally defeated. "It will gradually make a huge, huge difference. But I stress gradually, because we're not there yet. We haven't defeated this virus yet," Prime Minister Boris Johnson told UK media on Tuesday.

Poland has bought over 60 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines from six producers, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Tuesday.

"In the past 24 hours, Russia has confirmed 26,097 cases in 85 regions, of which 5,090 (19.5 percent) were detected actively, with people showing no clinical symptoms," the response center said, adding that the case count has reached 2,515,009. Moscow has confirmed 5,232 new coronavirus cases over the given period, down from 7,279 the day before. The Russian capital was followed by St. Petersburg with 3,734 cases, down from 3,741 the day before, and the Moscow region with 1,341 new cases, up from 1,315 the day before.

Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old grandmother, on Tuesday became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine shot outside of a trial as Britain began vaccinating its population. Keenan received the vaccine at her local hospital in Coventry, central England, on Tuesday morning at 0631 GMT, a week before she turns 91. Britain began rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech on Tuesday, the first Western country to start vaccinating its general population in what was hailed as a decisive watershed in defeating the coronavirus. "I feel so privileged to be the first person vaccinated against Covid-19," said Keenan, after she received the jab. I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year. Keenan, known as Maggie to her friends, is a former jewellery shop assistant who retired four years ago. She has a daughter, a son and four grandchildren.

Britain began the mass-vaccination of its population against Covid-19 on Tuesday, becoming the first Western nation to do so in a global endeavour that poses one of the biggest logistical challenges in peacetime history. On a day dubbed "V-Day", health workers started inoculating people with a shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech , with the country a test case for the world as it contends with distributing a compound that must be stored at -70C (-94F).

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed the start of a Covid vaccination programme on Tuesday and thanked health workers, scientists and people who had volunteered for testing. "We will beat this together," Johnson said in a message on social media, and urged the public to continue to follow guidance aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

Since the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine got the green light from the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the NHS said its workers have been working around the clock to manage the large-scale logistical challenge of deploying the vaccine.

Alexei Zakharov, a Moscow economics professor, got the Russian coronavirus vaccine injected into his upper arm over the weekend. Getting the shot was an easy decision, he said — not because the Russian government said it was safe, but because scores of Russians have shared their experience with it on social media.

South Korea more than tripled the number of coronavirus vaccine containers aircraft can carry by easing limits on dry ice needed to keep them cold, the country's deputy minister for aviation told Reuters on Tuesday.

Abu Dhabi is seeking volunteers to take part in Phase 3 clinical trials of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine, known as Sputnik V, in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Two doses of the vaccine will be given to up to 500 initial volunteers, according to the emirate's media office. Russia on Saturday began distributing the vaccine to the most exposed groups in the country, the start of the first large-scale vaccination against the disease there.

The number of new Covid-19 cases reported in a span of 24 hours was recorded below 27,000 after nearly five months on Tuesday, taking India's infection tally to over 97 lakh, while total recoveries surged to 91.78 lakh, according to the Union health ministry.

With the chances of a Covid-19 vaccine being available soon increasing, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the mobile technology will be used for mass inoculation against the pandemic. Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, he said mobile technology has enabled benefits worth billions of dollars to reach the deserving and also helped the poor and vulnerable during the pandemic. "It is also with the help of mobile technology that we will embark on one of the world's largest Covid-19 vaccination drive," he said.