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Britain this week became the first Western country to roll out the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, which Canada, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have also approved.

And while Russia and China have already begun inoculation efforts with domestically produced vaccines, EU countries are eagerly awaiting clearance.

The EU’s watchdog said it would deliver decisions on the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in late December and early January respectively, despite the disturbance of a two-week-long cyber attack, which is under investigation.

A new combined approach is also being tested by AstraZeneca, whose Russian branch said it would mix its shot with the Russia-made Sputnik V vaccine in clinical trials.

“Combinations of different COVID-19 vaccines may be an important step in generating wider protection through a stronger immune response and better accessibility,” the pharma giant said in its statement.

Yet some vaccine development efforts have suffered setbacks.

France’s Sanofi and Britain’s GSK announced that their candidate would not be ready until the end of 2021, after new results showed a low immune response in older adults.

The development of a vaccine by The University of Queensland in Australia was also abandoned Friday after clinical trials produced a false positive HIV result among subjects involved in early-stage testing.

The government will now axe plans to purchase millions of doses of the candidate vaccine and instead increase orders of alternatives from AstraZeneca and Novax, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

Once it secures official approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the US hopes to start vaccinating 20 million people this month.

Long-term care facility residents and health workers at the front of the line will be the first to get shots.

Momentum behind the Pfizer jab has been building with New England Journal of Medicine recently publishing results of a clinical trial involving nearly 44,000 people, which confirmed it was 95 percent effective with no serious safety issues.

Yet some lingering questions remain, such as whether more side effects will emerge with longer follow-up, how long the vaccine remains effective, whether it will limit transmission and how it will work in children, pregnant women, and immunocompromised patients.