Uğur Şahin, CEO of German biotech firm BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer in developing the coronavirus vaccine, said that the coronavirus will continue for the next ten years. Asked at a virtual press conference over the weekend whether he believes the world will be able to return to normal, Şahin responded: “We need a new definition of normal. The virus will stay with us for the next 10 years and we have to get used to further outbreaks.” Şahin also said that the vaccine will be able to be adjusted for the new virus variant in about six weeks.

As Israel prepares for its third lockdown, hospitals in Jerusalem are reaching their maximum capacity for coronavirus patients. The Health Ministry told emergency services on Sunday that some coronavirus patients in Jerusalem who need to be hospitalized should be taken to hospitals outside the city. Meanwhile, Israel is continuing with its national vaccination drive. Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said on Sunday that 280,000 Israelis were vaccinated in the past week. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu‏‏ said on Motzei Shabbos that Israel is aiming to vaccinate around 150,000 people a day, vaccinating over 2 million Israelis by the end of January. The lockdown will begin at 5 p.m.

Medical workers, nursing home residents and politicians are set to be vaccinated against the coronavirus across the European Union on Sunday, part of an effort by the bloc’s 27 nations to roll out shots in a coordinated and equitable fashion. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen released a video celebrating the vaccine rollout, calling it “a touching moment of unity” in the battle to protect the bloc’s nearly 450 million people from the worst public health crisis in a century. As it turned out, some EU immunizations began a day early in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia.

South Korea had seemed to be winning the fight against the coronavirus: Quickly ramping up its testing, contact-tracing and quarantine efforts paid off when it weathered an early outbreak without the economic pain of a lockdown. But a deadly resurgence has reached new heights during Christmas week, prompting soul-searching on how the nation sleepwalked into a crisis. The 1,241 infections on Christmas Day were the largest daily increase. Another 1,132 cases were reported Saturday, bringing South Korea’s caseload to 55,902. Over 15,000 were added in the last 15 days alone. An additional 221 fatalities over the same period, the deadliest stretch, took the death toll to 793.

A total of 69 suspected cases of the new British COVID-19 variant were discovered in Israeli laboratories last week. Forty-nine of the cases were discovered in the lab at Assaf HaRofeh Hospital in Be’er Yaakov and another 19 in a lab in southern Israel, Channel 13 reported on Friday. Some of the patients who tested positive for the mutated virus variant hadn’t traveled abroad, confirming fears that the variant is spreading in Israel. The new variant is much more infectious, possibly as much as 70% more than the original coronavirus strain, leading to a surge in infection rates.

Millions of people in the U.K. faced tough new coronavirus restrictions Saturday, with Scotland and Northern Ireland demanding tighter measures to try to halt a new variant of the virus that is believed to spread more quickly. Northern Ireland went into a six-week lockdown and in Wales, restrictions that were relaxed for Christmas Day were also re-imposed. The number of people under England’s top level of restrictions — Tier 4 — increased by 6 million on Saturday to 24 million people overall, around 43% of England’s population. The region included London and many of its surrounding areas. No indoor mixing of households is allowed, and only essential travel permitted.

The nurses of California are afraid. It’s Christmas Eve, and they aren’t home with their families. They are working, always working, completely gowned up — and worn down. They’re frightened by what people are doing, or not doing, during a coronavirus pandemic that has already killed more than 320,000 nationwide and shows no signs of slowing down. They’re even more terrified of what’s next. “Every day, I look into the eyes of someone who is struggling to breathe,” said nurse Jenny Carrillo, her voice breaking. A charge nurse at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, Carrillo is haunted by the daily counts of COVID-19 patients. Dark shadows circle her eyes.

With rich countries snapping up supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, some parts of the world may have to rely on Chinese-developed shots to try to conquer the outbreak. The question: Will they work? There is no outward reason to believe they won’t, but China has a history of vaccine scandals, and its drugmakers have revealed little about their final human trials and the more than 1 million emergency-use inoculations they say have been carried out inside the country already. Wealthy nations have reserved about 9 billion of the 12 billion mostly Western-developed shots expected to be produced next year, while COVAX, a global effort to ensure equal access to COVID-19 vaccines, has fallen short of i ts promised capacity of 2 billion doses.

The United States will require airline passengers from Britain to get a negative COVID-19 test before their flight. The U.S. is the latest country to announce new travel restrictions because of a new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading in Britain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says airline passengers from the United Kingdom will have to get negative COVID-19 tests within three days of their trip and provide the results to the airline. The agency says the order will be signed Friday and go into effect on Monday. The CDC says because of travel restrictions in place since March, air travel to the U.S. from the U.K. has been cut by 90%.

HaGaon HaRav Yitzchak Zilberstein, Rav of Ramat Elchanan and a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, publicized a p’sak din halacha on Wednesday on being vaccinated against the coronavirus. HaRav Zilberstein wrote the p’sak after holding a meeting with Prof. Ron Balicer, a member of the Health Ministry’s advisory team on COVID-19, and other medical experts, on the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. HaRav Zilberstein wrote that since we currently we don’t have a Beis Din of Rabbanim who are oisek in refuah, the Aruch HaShulchan says that during these times we must rely on doctors who have been approved by the government to practice medicine.