As Russia's Sputnik V vaccine proved to be almost 92% effective in protecting against COVID-19, Calum Semple, a professor of outbreak medicine, said the E484K coronavirus mutation that could hurt vaccine efficacy has occurred spontaneously in the UK variant.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS * Eikon users, see COVID-19: MacroVitals https://apac1.apps.cp.thomsonreuters.com/cms/?navid=1592404098 for a case tracker and summary of news.
EUROPE
* Russia will be able to vaccinate 700 million people with the Sputnik V shot this year, the head of the RDIF sovereign wealth fund said.
* Sweden has seen an increased spread of the UK variant, with 11% of randomly screened positive tests last week showing the mutation, the Public Health Agency said.
* Britain began door-to-door testing of 80,000 people in a bid to stem the spread of the new highly infectious South African variant of coronavirus.
* The European Union tightened its rules for visitors from outside the bloc, specifying that they would only be allowed in freely from countries with very few cases and almost none of the more transmissible variants.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* Vietnam's health minister said a newly detected outbreak that has infected 301 people and spread to 10 provinces and cities was caused by the more contagious UK variant of the coronavirus.
* Japan will hold the Summer Olympics regardless of the situation with the pandemic, and plans to begin vaccinations in mid-February.
AMERICAS
* Verity Pharmaceuticals and Serum Institute of India (SII)have applied to distribute SII's licensed version of AstraZeneca's vaccine in Canada, potentially easing shortages as European manufacturing sites struggle to meet global demand.
* Mexico's Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said the nation had signed a contract for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine and would likely issue an emergency use authorization for it within hours.
* The head of the PAHO-WHO mission in Venezuela said the South American nation has reserved at least 1.4 million vaccines through the international COVAX system slated to arrive by the end of this month.
* The U.S. government promised undocumented migrants the same access to vaccines as other civilians and said inoculation centres would be immigration enforcement-free zones.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* South Africa will get 2 million doses of vaccines from the COVAX vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the World Health Organization by March, President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
* Dubai will start vaccinating people with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the state media office said, after receiving its first shipment from India.
MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS
* The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be less able to protect against the South African variant of the virus that has developed a worrying mutation, according to results of a British study.
* China's Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products said it had completed a facility designed to be able to produce 400 million doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine per year, doubling a capacity target promised in 2020.
* EU curbs on exports of vaccines could delay Japan's inoculation drive, the minister in charge of the campaign said.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
* Global stock markets gained for a second day on Tuesday, spurred by increased optimism about economic stimulus and global recovery, while retail investors retreated from GameStop and their new-found interest in silver. [MKTS/GLOB]
* Portugal's economy shrank 7.6% last year, its biggest annual slump since 1936, and the government warned that the outlook for recovery was deteriorating because the pandemic had worsened.
* In Spain, the number of people registering as jobless rose for the fourth month in a row in January to 3.96 million as restrictions to contain new outbreaks of the pandemic continued to limit activity.
(Compiled by Veronica Snoj and Jagoda Darlak; Edited by Angus MacSwan and Bill Berkrot)
