Learn English with the News – EU Buys 300 Million COVID Vaccines

Finally some good news after almost a year (or what seemed to be longer) of one bad news story after another. The EU, which has one of the largest concentrations of COVID infections in the entire world, has purchased nearly half a billion vaccines which will be administered throughout the first months of 2021. Things are looking better already for this new year!

Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Full text:

“Up to 300 million doses of the Coronavirus vaccine have been imported by the European Union, after showing positive results in trials.

Pfizer and BioNTech have said that the deliveries should start by the end of 2020.

The EU, however, have decided not to include information about how the vaccine will be carried out. They have only said that “a range of steps” will be taken in advance to ensure everyone’s safety.

Early evidence shows that the vaccine prevents more than 90 percent of individuals from experiencing symptoms of Covid-19. In context, the flu vaccine is only 50% effective!

As of Monday, the vaccine had been tested on over 43,000 people with no safety concerns raised.

Daniel Fagbuyi, an emergency physician/biodefense expert, said that this level of reliability is consistent with our best childhood vaccines, such as the vaccine against measles and chickenpox. “That’s a big thing, that’s a big deal,” he said.

The two companies that created the vaccine will apply for emergency permission to start using it by the end of November. In this case, a few people will receive the vaccine this year.

European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said at a press conference on Wednesday that the EU vaccine agreement was ‘extremely important’, adding that it will only be distributed when it is “proven to be safe.”

Encouraging data was also produced by a Russian vaccine named Sputnik V.

Russian scientists revealed on Wednesday that the Sputnik V vaccine had so far demonstrated a 92 percent success rate. However, the information has not been checked by experts outside of Russia, therefore it cannot be verified.”