"Help is on the way", said British Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

With vaccinations in the United Kingdom beginning as soon as next week, the milestone marks the first of many COVID-19 vaccines seeking approval over the coming months. At the top of the list are nursing home residents and workers, followed by people older than 80 and health and social care workers. The vaccine is still considered experimental while final testing is done.

"The whole authorization process is also being simplified", he said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that the "searchlights of science" had picked out the "invisible enemy", which has been blamed for close to 60,000 deaths in Britain. -Gen. Dany Fortin, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation commander, to lead the Canadian military in its role co-ordinating logistics for distributing a COVID-19 vaccine.

BioNTech is awaiting a decision from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the middle of December, the same time horizon expected for a ruling from European Union regulators, Chief Medical Officer Ozlem Tureci said in a press conference.

The EU watchdog said this involved a "controlled and robust framework" of studying data from lab studies and large clinical trials, before finally deciding whether to approve the vaccine.

The EU regulator says it will hold a special meeting by 29 December at the latest to decide on whether to grant conditional approval for the vaccine. The virus has killed more than 270,000 in the U.S. When two full doses were given at least a month apart, it had an efficacy of 62 per cent.

"Right now, as we speak, Health Canada is looking at four different vaccine candidates - candidates that are leading around the world and that we have signed for tens of millions of doses for", Trudeau said in response to a question from Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner.

That is only a fraction of what will be needed as public health officials try to vaccinate much of the world's population.

"We have to remember on many days, day after day the USA is having more deaths than we've had in the whole year of the pandemic here in Australia, so it reflects the desperate situation of those countries and these authorisations require the delivery of the vaccine to be very tightly and closely monitored".

"Making sure a COVID-19 vaccine is safe before approving it is Health Canada's priority, and when a vaccine is ready, Canada will be ready".

In the interview, Vance acknowledged the potential challenge posed by the spring flood season coinciding with a potential surge in COVID-19 cases and efforts to get vaccines to Canadians most at risk of the illness. He notes that although this rapid pace of development is unprecedented for a vaccine it does not mean corners have been cut.

The MHRA began a rolling review of Pfizer and BioNTech data from October, with each "package" of data reviewed as soon as it became available.

"We want to be vaccinating people as fast as we can in New Zealand". "People are dying of COVID, so you make that decision: Do you want to die or do you want the vaccine?"

Pfizer said that it has developed shipping containers that use dry ice and that GPS-enabled sensors will allow the company to track each shipment and ensure it stays cold. Different vaccines, depending on their properties, could be tailored to different groups.

Instead, the initial shipments, expected to arrive within seven days, will go no further than approximately 50 hospital "hubs" across the country.

In total, the British government has secured 357 million doses of seven separate COVID-19 vaccines.