U-turn as Ardern opts for sole use of Pfizer jab

Wellington: New Zealand says it will now use only the Pfizer vaccine to inoculate its population against coronavirus, departing from earlier plans to use four different vaccines.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the strategy yesterday, saying the decision was based on the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness.

She said this would make it easier and fairer for all New Zealanders to have access to the same vaccine.

However, the strategy may also be driven in part by delays in getting vaccines approved.

So far, New Zealand’s medical regulators have approved only the Pfizer vaccine and are reviewing two other jabs.

Ms Ardern said New Zealand has purchased 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough to inoculate all five million residents with the required two doses each.

She said most of the doses are expected to arrive in New Zealand during the second half of this year.

The country has stamped out community spread of the virus, and inoculations are not considered as urgent as in many other countries.

Berlin: Germany is looking to ramp up the use of the Astrazeneca vaccine after authorities last week gave the green light for it to be administered to people aged 65 and over.

Hundreds of thousands of doses have been gathering dust in recent weeks due to the restrictions on who could get the vaccine.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Germany has received 2.1 million doses of the Astrazeneca jab so far but administered just 721,000.

Germany’s vaccine campaign has lagged behind Britain and the US. By Sunday, Germany had given out 5.2 million vaccine doses, with 3% of the population fully vaccinated.

Touques: A French billionaire aviation industrialist and member of parliament has died in a helicopter crash along with the pilot, authorities said.

Olivier Dassault, 69, was heir to a powerful family business empire that made Falcon private jets and Rafale fighter planes and owned many other businesses including Le Figaro newspaper.

A judicial inquiry for eventual manslaughter charges is under way after Sunday’s crash in the town of Touques in Normandy, according to the regional prosecutor’s office in Lisieux.

The French national air accident investigation agency, the BEA, said the Airbus AS350 helicopter crashed just after take-off from a private airfield. BEA investigators were travelling to the site yesterday.

Bari: Italian police have arrested a 36-year-old Algerian in the southern city of Bari on suspicion of supporting attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November 2015.

The suspect was arrested on suspicion of participating in a terror organisation, and is believed to have belonged to Islamic State, national police said in a statement.

The suspect was not identified by name.

He is believed to have supplied falsified documents to the terrorists who launched co-ordinated attacks against the Bataclan nightclub, five cafes in central Paris and the Stade de France in the Paris suburb of St Denis.