Pretoria, February 2 (RHC)-- South Africa has received its first batch of coronavirus vaccines.  The one million AstraZeneca-Oxford shots will be used for healthcare workers as they respond to an overwhelming surge linked to a variant that is believed to be more infectious, and potentially more resistant to current vaccines.

In other news, in Brazil, hospitals in the Amazonian city Manaus report continued shortages of oxygen amid a second, massive surge in COVID-19 cases.  In October, medical researchers found about 75% of Manaus’s population had already been infected; many of the new infections are from a coronavirus variant known as P.1 that appears to have evolved to become more likely to reinfect people. 

According to reports, one case of the P.1 variant was recently reported in the United States for the first time, in Minnesota.