Moderna says vaccine will protect against powerful new variant

In another press conference on Monday, Toronto's Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa said Ontarians "must assume" the United Kingdom variant will spread in the province. The company will test adding a third shot of its current vaccine to boost its two-dose regimen.

The report comes after similar news from Pfizer-BioNTech, which released data last week, also not yet peer-reviewed, showing that antibody-rich blood serum samples from 16 vaccinated people showed that vaccine was equally as effective at blocking the British variant as it was against the original version of the virus that took hold in Wuhan, China, a year ago.

Given the news of further delays that will leave the province with "extremely limited supply" over the coming weeks, health officials made a decision to delay second doses for 42 days, up from 35.

On Monday morning, officials said in light of the supply slowdown, the province needs to take a strategic approach to administering the vaccine, focusing exclusively on accelerating the vaccination of long-term care home residents as well as high-risk retirement and First Nation elder care home residents.

Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, says those variants are not only more infectious, but they do not respond as well to the monoclonal antibodies that have been used in treating patients.

This is a developing story and will be updated. The rollout of vaccines can help to combat the virus and end its negative impacts on everything from education access to gender equality. "It's about choosing in the short term, to give more people this protection from one (vaccine) instead of cutting some people out for protection". Henry hinted further restrictions could come into effect if cases don't start to decline in the next two weeks.

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I think because we didn't talk about the spectrum of the disease, everyone interpreted what they knew". Birx's critics have said she acquiesced to Trump at times, raising concerns about her credibility.

"New Zealand has done a fantastic job of making sure that we are in the mix for early vaccine purchase. This is being done to the exclusion to other countries in the world", Ramaphosa said.

Ontario has pressed pause on providing first doses of the vaccine to all other groups, including health-care workers and essential caregivers in those settings.

So far in B.C., she said, there have been 56 reports of adverse events of the 120,000 doses of vaccine given. Nobody has died from vaccination as of yet.

More than 25 million Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally on Sunday. Of those new cases, 234 were in the Interior Health region.

There are 4,392 active cases of coronavirus in the province, with 328 people in hospital, 68 of whom are in intensive care. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.