EU approves second vaccine

Private payrolls were contracted in December for the first time since April, CNBC’s Jeff Cox reports.

The number of jobs fell by 123,000 during the month, a sharp drop from the 60,000 jobs expected by economists. The national job market was on the mend after widespread business closures at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

–Sara salinas

European Union health regulators have approved Moderna’s Covid vaccine for use in the 27-country bloc. It is the second such drug to gain approval from the European Medicines Agency, reports CNBC’s Silvia Amaro.

The green light could help jump-start vaccine deployment in Europe, which has been criticized for a slow pace and occasional accidents.

Moderna’s vaccine has already been approved in the UK and US, where it is currently distributed and administered. The vaccine, similar to that from Pfizer, is a two-dose regimen and has been found in clinical trials to be 94% effective.

—Sara Salinas

A new strain of the virus that has emerged in South Africa is cause for concern. Similar to a variant that has been discovered in the UK in recent months, the strain that has emerged in South Africa is found to be much more transmissible.

So far, scientists don’t think a new variant is more deadly. But being more transmissible means more people can be infected and could mean more serious infections and more deaths as a result.

Questions are now being raised as to whether the coronavirus vaccines developed at breakneck speed last year will be effective against important mutations in the virus, like the one identified in South Africa. CNBC takes a look at what we know (and what we don’t know) about this new strain.

–Holly ellyatt