Coronavirus live news: UK to start vaccinations on Tuesday; WHO criticises mandatory vaccines | World news

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

My name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest updates from around the world.

You can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan to ask me what I would like for Christmas.

Britain is set to administer the first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday, with the NHS giving top priority to people over the age of 80, frontline healthcare workers and care home staff and residents.

Meanwhile theWorld Health Organization said Monday that persuading people on the merits of a Covid-19 vaccine would be far more effective than trying to make the jabs mandatory.

The WHO said it would be down to individual countries as to how they want to conduct their vaccination campaigns against the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• France unlikely to end lockdown as planned on 15 December. The French health ministry’s top official, Jérôme Salomon, has backed up the bleak assessment attributed to the health minister, Olivier Véran, earlier, who said the country was unlikely to meet the conditions required for ending its national lockdown on 15 December.
• Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who tested positive for Covid-19, is doing well in the hospital and does not have a fever, the US president said. “Rudy’s doing well,” Trump told reporters. “No temperature, and he actually called me earlier this morning.”
• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada will get up to 249,000 doses of the vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech before the end of December.
• Italy’s interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, discovered during a cabinet meeting on Monday that she had coronavirus, prompting her to leave the gathering hastily. political sources told Reuters. Citing a source in her office, the news agency reported that Lamorgese was asymptomatic and tested positive after undergoing a routine swab before the meeting.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said the government will offer Covid-19 vaccines to all Brazilians, without cost or obligation, once health regulator Anvisa gives it scientific and legal approval.In a post on his Twitter account, Bolsonaro also said the economy ministry has pledged there will be no shortage of resources for everyone who wants a vaccine to get one.