EU approves its second vaccine

Private payrolls were contracted in December for the first time since April, reports Jeff Cox of CNBC.

The number of jobs fell 123,000 during the month, a sharp decline compared to the 60,000 job gains expected by economists. The national labor market was recovering after companies closed in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

–Sara Salinas

European Union health regulators have approved the Covid vaccine from Moderna for use in the 27-nation bloc. It is the second drug to obtain approval from the European Medicines Agency, reports CNBC’s Silvia Amaro.

The go-ahead may help drive the vaccine’s launch in Europe, which has faced criticism for a slow pace and occasional setbacks.

Moderna’s vaccine was previously approved in the UK and the USA, where it is currently being distributed and administered. The vaccine, similar to that of Pfizer, is a two-dose regimen and has been considered in clinical trials to be 94% effective.

—Sara Salinas

A new strain of the virus that has emerged in South Africa is causing concern. Similar to a variant that was discovered in the UK in recent months, the strain that emerged in South Africa is proving to be much more transmissible.

So far, scientists do not believe that any of the new variants are more deadly. But being more communicable means that more people can be infected and it can mean more serious infections and more deaths as a result.

Questions are being raised about whether coronavirus vaccines developed at breakneck speed last year will be effective against significant mutations of the virus, such as the one identified in South Africa. The CNBC analyzes what we know (and what we don’t know) about this new strain.

–Holly Ellyatt