Lebanon will receive its first shipment of coronavirus vaccines in February from Pfizer-BioNTech, the health ministry said Sunday.

"Lebanon will receive the vaccine in mid-February in instalments," it said in a statement.

Jordan on Sunday confirmed two cases of a particularly infectious coronavirus variant in a man and his wife who had arrived from Britain.

Israel was set Sunday to begin its third coronavirus lockdown, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced optimism that a "world record" vaccination drive will restore a degree of normality within weeks.

EU countries on Sunday embarked on a vaccination campaign to defeat the "nightmare" of Covid-19, as the growing spread of a new coronavirus variant intensified fears the pandemic could wreak further devastation.

The Covid-19 vaccine developed by the British drugs group AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford has achieved a "winning formula" for efficacy, the company's chief executive said on Sunday.

Four cases of a coronavirus variant believed to be particularly infectious that recently emerged in Britain have been confirmed in Madrid, the regional government said Saturday, the first cases detected in Spain.

France has confirmed the first case of a new coronavirus variant that recently emerged in Britain, its health ministry said.

The European Union began a vaccine rollout Saturday, even as countries in the bloc were forced back into lockdown by a new strain of the virus, believed to be more infectious, that continues to spread from Britain.

China's ruling Communist Party leaders have congratulated themselves on their "extremely extraordinary" success in handling the Covid-19 outbreak domestically, ahead of a World Health Organization probe into the disease's origins.

France's first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine were delivered early Saturday to the Paris hospital system's central pharmacy outside the capital, an AFP journalist saw.