U.S. President-elect Joe Biden received a COVID-19 vaccination on live television Monday to convince Americans that the inoculation is safe. “I’m ready,” Biden told a nurse at a hospital in Newark, Delaware, before being injected Monday with a vaccine developed by drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech. “I’m doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it’s available to take the vaccine. There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. His wife, Jill Biden, was administered a dose of the vaccine hours earlier at the same hospital, which is near the couple’s Delaware home. Other …

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is studying variants of the coronavirus found in Britain and South Africa, adding there is no evidence they are deadlier or more severe than any more common strains, and the best thing people can do is work to suppress transmission.During the agency’s regular briefing at its Geneva headquarters, officials said they continue to receive data about the variants and there are reports from Britain the new strain there can be transmitted more easily.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters they are working with …

China has announced it will allow access by international scientists to its massive radio telescope — the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in southwestern Guizhou province. It is now the largest and only instrument of its kind in the world following the recent collapse of a Puerto Rico-based observatory.Ahead of the announcement, Chinese officials last week allowed international journalists access to the instrument, built in a natural basin between mountains in a remote area of Guizhou.  Work on the FAST began in 2011 and it started full operations in January …

With inoculations of a second COVID-19 vaccine set to begin Monday across the United States, federal health regulators have issued new guidelines of who should be prioritized in the next round of inoculations.An advisory panel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted 13-1 Sunday to make Americans 75 and older, along with so-called “frontline essential workers,” the first in line to receive coronavirus vaccines. The essential workers  include first responders such as police and firefighters, teachers, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, public transportation employees, and workers …

As a second vaccine against the novel coronavirus is being rolled out across the United States ahead of the Christmas holiday, Britain is shutting down out of concern that a new mutation of the virus is highly contagious. VOA’s Michelle Quinn has more. …