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The World Health Organization said that China has blocked the arrival of a team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, in a rare rebuke from the UN agency. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said two scientists on the United Nations team had already left their home countries for Wuhan when they were told that Chinese officials had not approved the necessary permissions to enter the country. (Regan and Sidhu, 1/6)

The European Union’s medicines agency was meeting Wednesday to consider giving the green light to Moderna Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine, a decision that would give the 27-nation bloc a second vaccine to use in the desperate battle to tame the virus rampaging across the continent. The meeting of the European Medicines Agency’s human medicines committee (CHMP) comes amid high rates of infections in many EU countries and strong criticism of the slow pace of vaccinations across the region of some 450 million people. (Furtula and Corder, 1/6)

Nearly two weeks after most other European Union nations, the Netherlands on Wednesday began its COVID-19 vaccination program, with nursing home staff and frontline workers in hospitals first in line for the shot. Sanna Elkadiri, a nurse at a nursing home for people with dementia, was the first to receive a shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mass vaccination center in Veghel, 120 kilometers (75 miles) southeast of the capital, Amsterdam. (Corder, 1/6)

Faced with surging coronavirus cases, some European countries are considering whether to change tack and join the U.K. in vaccinating as many people as possible with just one dose rather than the two administered during clinical trials so far. This issue has been live since December 30, when the U.K. announced its decision to delay second doses by up to 12 weeks when it approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use. The switch also applied to the BioNTech/Pfizer jab. Just this week, Denmark announced its decision to delay the second dose of both the Pfizer and forthcoming Moderna jabs by up to six weeks. The German health ministry has also confirmed looking into widening vaccination coverage by similar delays between doses. (Collis, 1/5)

Opposition lawmakers in the Philippines want to know how members of President Rodrigo Duterte’s security detail and potentially other officials received Covid-19 vaccines, when the country hasn’t approved any. The scandal emerged after Mr. Duterte said last month that several members of a military unit tasked with his personal protection had been vaccinated without his knowing. Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante III, the unit’s commander, later said “a handful” of guards got the shots in September and October to protect the president from exposure to the virus. (Solomon, 1/6)

Hoping to quell growing outrage over a video from inside an Egyptian hospital purportedly showing a number of Covid-19 patients dying after an interruption in oxygen supply, the country’s authorities insisted that neither shortages nor negligence caused the deaths. The wrenching footage, posted on social media this weekend, was shot on a cellphone by a visiting relative who appeared to be in a frantic state as he paced from bed to bed repeating the phrase “Everyone in the intensive care unit has died.” (El-Naggar, 1/5)