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The U.K. is on track to vaccinate all people over age 50 by May and is already planning for a program of top-up immunizations to fight new variants of coronavirus from the autumn, officials said. Health Minister Nadhim Zahawi predicted annual vaccination drives similar to the program of injections given for influenza each year. Work is already under way to develop a shot that will offer better protection against the South Africa variant, after a study suggested the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine had limited effect on mild Covid-19. The government expects “probably an annual or a booster in the autumn and then an annual” dose of vaccines to be given “in the way we do with flu vaccinations,” Zahawi told the BBC on Sunday. (Ross, 2/8)

Rather than shooting citizens in the arm, European countries might be shooting themselves in the foot. Increasing numbers of European public health authorities and scientists say they will restrict the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to younger populations, citing the fact that current data doesn't show the jab is effective in people over the age of 55. Some British experts say EU countries are setting age restrictions only because of limited supplies. (Deutsch, 2/5)

The vaccine pipeline is clogged, hospitals are overflowing, oxygen tanks for the ill are scarce — and the toll of dead and infected keeps spiking. Meanwhile, restaurant workers and others have taken to the streets protesting shutdowns as Mexico’s coronavirus-ravaged economy continues to crater absent any significant stimulus package from the government. “It feels like a horror film that never ends,” said Evelyn Beltrán, 39, a nurse in the city of Puebla. “What an awful sense of hopelessness and desperation.” (McDonnell and Sánchez, 2/7)

China reported no new locally transmitted mainland COVID-19 case for the first time in nearly two months, official data showed on Monday, adding to signs that it has managed to stamp out the latest wave of the disease. The total number of COVID-19 cases rose slightly to 14 on Feb. 7 from 12 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said in a statement, but all were imported infections from overseas. Seven of the cases were in Shanghai, the rest in the southeastern Guangdong province. (2/7)

In other global developments —

More than 100 advocacy groups from dozens of countries are urging the World Trade Organization council to extend an exemption in a trade deal governing intellectual property rights so that low-income countries can more easily obtain drugs and vaccines, a concern that has been magnified by the Covid-19 pandemic. (Silverman, 2/5)

A deceased woman was found to have been infected with Ebola in an area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an outbreak was declared over in June, the World Health Organization said. The woman, the wife of an Ebola survivor, had sought treatment in a health center in Butembo, in North Kivu province, for Ebola-like symptoms, the WHO said in a statement Sunday. Butembo was one of the epicenters of the world’s second-largest Ebola outbreak that lasted almost two years in eastern Congo, causing 3,481 cases and 2,299 deaths. More than 70 contacts have been identified amid a WHO investigation, and sites visited by the patient are being disinfected, the agency said. “It is not unusual for sporadic cases to occur following a major outbreak,” WHO said. (Gale, 2/7)