U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that the country will accelerate its coronavirus vaccination booster initiative to fight a “tidal wave” of cases resulting from the infectious Omicron variant. Johnson acknowledged that two doses of vaccine were unlikely sufficient to fight off the recent surge in infections, which hit the second-highest level in the…

The recent spectacle surrounding Vaxzevria, the AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) COVID-19 vaccine, could exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, which is significant in many parts of the world. In the U.S., the independent data and safety monitoring board overseeing the Phase 3 trial contacted government authorities with concerns that the summary data were misleading. More recently, the European Medicines Agency (EMA)…

The European Union announced plans to invoke emergency rules that could substantially reduce exports to the United Kingdom and other countries for six weeks. AstraZeneca, a central provider of vaccines to the European Union, had reduced EU projected shipments to the EU after encountering production delays at plants in Belgium and the Netherlands. AstraZeneca will…