 | | | | Countries across Europe considered new curbs on movement on Tuesday while U.S. President Joe Biden appealed to all Americans to get vaccinated to fight the Omicron variant sweeping the world days before the second Christmas of the pandemic. | | | | | | Israel announced on Tuesday that it will offer a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to people over 60, amid concern over the spread of the Omicron variant. | | | | | | Oxford University and AstraZeneca Plc have begun work to produce an Omicron-targeted version of their coronavirus vaccine, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. | | | | | | Brazilian healthcare startup Alice has raised $127 million in its series C funding round led by Softbank Latin America Fund, the company said on Tuesday. | | | | | | French-Austrian biotech firm Valneva on Tuesday announced what it described as positive topline results from the lot-to-lot Phase 3 trial of its single-shot Chikungunya vaccine candidate, VLA1553, saying the trial met its primary endpoint. | | | | | | Germany will introduce new measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus including limiting private gatherings for vaccinated people to a maximum of 10 people before New Year's Eve, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday. | | | | | | France will pass a law transforming its health pass needed to exercise some professions and to go to cinemas and bars into a "vaccination" pass in the first half of January, the government said on Tuesday. | | | | | | An Israeli hospital on Tuesday confirmed the first known death in the countryof a patient with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, but said he had suffered from a number of serious pre-existing conditions. The Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba said the man, in his sixties, died on Monday, two weeks after he was admitted to the coronavirus ward. | | | | | | The Biden administration's use of the Defense Production Act should help get 200 million to 500 million COVID-19 tests to market, Dr. Anthony Fauci told MSNBC in an interview on Tuesday. | | | | | | The United States' population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year on record as the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the more subdued growth the country has experienced in recent years, the U.S. Census Bureau said. | | | | | |
