Asia Today: Hong Kong gets Pfizer vaccines as 2nd option

→ Forget Bitcoin. Crypto Millionaire Predicts 8,788% Gains For THIS (From Paradigm Press) (Ad)

Hong Kong Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan, fourth left, and Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip, fourth right, with Cathay Pacific and Fosun Pharma Co. representatives gesture after the delivery of Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines at the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. (Jerome Favre/Pool Photo via AP)

HONG KONG (AP) — Over 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday following a two-day delay due to export procedures, offering a second inoculation option for the city.

The Pfizer-BioNTech shots will be offered to about 2.4 million eligible residents from priority groups such as those aged 60 and above and health care workers.

The 585,000 doses of the vaccine — the first batch of the initial 1 million — arrived from Germany. The remaining doses will be delivered in early March, according to a government statement.

Get Pfizer alerts:

About 70,000 residents who have registered for Hong Kong’s vaccination program, which kicked off on Friday, will receive the shots developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac. The Sinovac vaccines were the first to arrive last week.

About 6,000 people have already been injected with the Sinovac vaccine. Registration details for those wishing to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech shots haven't been announced yet.

Hong Kong has struck deals for a total of 22.5 million doses, with 7.5 million each from Sinovac, AstraZeneca and Fosun Pharma, which is delivering the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. The government has so far approved the Sinovac and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

In other developments around the Asia-Pacific region:

— South Korea has reported another 405 coronavirus cases as it began vaccinating tens of thousands of workers at front-line hospitals in the second day of its mass immunization program. The daily increase reported by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Saturday brought the national caseload to 89,321, including 1,595 deaths. Most of the new cases came from the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, which was hit hardest by a devastating winter surge that erased months of hard-won gains and sparked criticism about the vaccine rollout that has been slower than many nations in the West.

Ad Paradigm Press

Forget Bitcoin. Crypto Millionaire Predicts 8,788% Gains For THIS

You might have seen that Bitcoin was one of the best performing assets of 2023. It gained 164%. But a crypto millionaire who has been tracking the space for more than a decade has ABANDONED Bitcoin. He found something better.

Click here to find out that this 8,788% cryptocurrency is.

— Sri Lanka's Health Ministry has decided to vaccinate everyone aged 30 and above in the high-risk areas of the capital Colombo and suburbs where COVID-19 cases are rising. There were 466 new cases in the last 24 hours. Sri Lankan began its inoculation drive in January starting with health workers. So far, more than 406,000 people have received their shots.

→ The "Smart Money" Is Ready for May 1st Are You? (From Stansberry Research) (Ad)

Should you invest $1,000 in Pfizer right now?

Before you consider Pfizer, you'll want to hear this.

MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis. MarketBeat has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and Pfizer wasn't on the list.

While Pfizer currently has a "Hold" rating among analysts, top-rated analysts believe these five stocks are better buys.

View The Five Stocks Here

Elon Musk's Next Move

Wondering when you'll finally be able to invest in SpaceX, StarLink, or The Boring Company? Click the link below to learn when Elon Musk will let these companies finally IPO.

Get This Free Report