Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:10 EU Nations Causing 'Very High Concern' 10 countries in the 27-member European Union (EU) face a COVID situation of "very high concern", the bloc's diseases agency says, warning the pandemic is worsening across the continent.In its weekly risk assessment, the European Centre for Disease Control lists Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland and Sl

In recent weeks, as Europe has again become the global epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, the surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalisations, and deaths has highlighted the continued vaccine hesitancy of one group of Europeans in particular: those in the formerly communist East. While 75.6% of European Union (EU) citizens are fully vaccinated, the share in Bulgaria is 26.2 percent and 39.6 percent in Romania. In countries outside the EU, the numbers are even bleaker.

Michael Thompson, a 47-year-old executive recruiter from Illinois, United States expects his former wife to take him to court over vaccinating their two children against COVID-19.He doesn't trust the vaccine for children, but she wants to follow US health guidelines and have their eight-year-old and 10-year-old inoculated.It is a clash repeated among separated families across the US, where widespread vaccine hesitancy has thwarted efforts to end the pandemic despite injections being free

Europe is once again "at the epicentre" of the COVID pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned, as cases soar across the continent.At a press conference WHO Europe head Hans Kluge said the continent could see half a million more deaths by February.He blamed insufficient vaccine take-up for the rise."We must change our tactics, from reacting to surges of COVID-19 to preventing them from happening in the first place," he said.The rate of vaccination has slowed

After her first Pfizer vaccine five months ago, Dahye Yim, 30, noticed something different with her menstrual cycle.Unusually heavier and with more physical symptoms such as a migraine, she went online to see if other women had experienced post-vaccine cyclical changes.She uncovered similar stories but failed to find scientifically-backed information on possible short-term vaccine side effects.The South Korean national, a PhD student based between London and Berlin, told Al Jazeera: “After I

The United States (US) on Friday authorized the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children aged five-to-11, paving the way for 28 million young Americans to soon get immunised.The decision came after a high-level medical panel advising the government this week endorsed the shots, ruling that the known benefits outweighed the risks of side-effects.The US follows only a handful of other countries including China, Chile, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates that are inoculating younger children with various

Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has urged richer countries to share their vaccines with poorer ones, in an exclusive interview with the BBC.Mr Widodo said it "shouldn't be just a few countries that get all the vaccines, and some other countries get only a little".He was speaking ahead of a visit to the G20 and COP26 meetings, where he will be meeting other world leaders.Indonesia was one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID pandemic.President Jokowi - as he is popul

Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:Billions Needed For COVID Plan The World Health Organization (WHO) says its new plan to secure and deploy vaccines, tests and treatments to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and potentially prevent another five million deaths needs US$23.4 billion over the next 12 months.New Russian Records Russia reports record numbers of daily coronavirus cases and deaths – 40,096 new cases and 1,159 fatalities – as Moscow shuts down no

The COVID pandemic will "go on for a year longer than it needs to" because poorer countries are not getting the vaccines they need, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.Dr Bruce Aylward, a senior leader at the WHO, said it meant the COVID crisis could "easily drag on deep into 2022".Less than 5 percent of Africa's population have been vaccinated, compared to 40 percent on most other continents.The United Kingdom (UK) has delivered more than 10 million vaccines to

As COVID-19 infections surge in England, people are increasingly reporting catching Sars-CoV-2 for a second or even third time.New analysis has suggested that unvaccinated individuals should expect to be re-infected with COVID-19 every 16 months, on average.With winter approaching, scientists are warning that such reinfections could add to the burden on the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), some calling for the vaccination programme to be extended to all schoolchildren, includin