Britain Rolls out AstraZeneca Shots as Coronavirus Vaccinations Gather Pace

Britain on Monday began rolling out the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, a possible game-changer in fighting the disease worldwide, while China raced to inoculate millions with a homegrown prophylactic.

Britain started the new drive with 530,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as it struggled to control a severe wave of infections that has threatened to overwhelm the public health system and prompted the government to warn tougher curbs can be expected.

The vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, is seen as a game-changer by many experts because it does not require very cold temperatures for storage like the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

That could mean greater access to the vaccine for less wealthy parts of the world in the fight against the coronavirus, which has infected nearly 85 million people with more than 1.8 million known deaths.

Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old retired maintenance manager, received the first jab at Oxford’s Churchill…