Coronavirus vaccine

The row over the supply of COVID-19 vaccines highlights the tension as Europe struggles to roll out inoculation programmes.

While the whole region was waiting to get at least some vaccines from the COVAX scheme, a plane from China landed in Belgrade with a million doses on board.

Edi Rama, PM of EU hopeful Albania, has already hit out at Brussels over its "morally and politically unacceptable" vaccine rollout.

Cuba wants to produce 100 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine this year, which would be the first developed in Latin America.

Regardless of how keen governments are to roll out the vaccine, it’s likely that some groups in society will be slower to receive it, leading to unequal access and curtailed freedoms.

"We can soon start to see the beginning of the end of the pandemic," said health commissioner Stella Kyriakides in a statement.

According to the ONS, 12.7 per cent of the population in England would have tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies by the end of 2020.

The agency's emergency committee said there were still "too many fundamental unknowns" about the effectiveness of vaccines.

"Everyone should get vaccinated, it's an ethical choice, because it puts their health, their life, but also the lives of others at risk," the pontiff said.