The Health Ministry reported 879 new covid-19 infections yesterday, up from 822 the day before. Egypt has now disclosed a total of 371,698 confirmed cases of covid-19. The ministry also reported 48 new deaths, bringing the country’s total death toll to 21,203.

Morocco has its first Omicron case: The Moroccan Health Ministry announced yesterday that it recorded its first Omicron case — a Moroccan citizen in the city of Casablanca, who is currently receiving treatment in hospital. Two days prior to the case being confirmed, the country had extended its travel ban on all inbound international flights until 31 December.

Pfizer / BioNTech are set to dethrone AstraZeneca as the main global supplier of covid vaccines through the Gavi / Covax program by the beginning of next year, according to Reuters. Covax has so far delivered over 600 mn jabs to around 150 countries, 220 mn of which were AstraZeneca and 160 mn were Pfizer. But jabs manufactured by the US firm will soon take the lead as the program starts to rely more heavily on vaccine donations from rich nations, which are mostly giving away Pfizer shots. Some 150 mn Pfizer jabs will be donated to Covax by the end of 1Q2022, according to documents from the World Health Organization seen by the newswire.

Sanofi is pushing its covid-19 vaccine release to 1Q2022 instead of this year, as the vaccine maker, which has partnered with GlaxoSmithKline on its covid vaccine, waits on the results of its late-stage clinical trials. The French pharma giant was one of the world’s largest vaccine makers before covid but its development of covid-19 jabs has lagged far behind its competitors, and it now hopes it can capitalize on the growing market for booster shots.