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Newspaper headlines: Vaccine 'hope' and 'back to normal by spring'

By BBC News
Staff

Published
image captionA breakthrough in the development of a vaccine for coronavirus is celebrated by Tuesday's front pages. "Our little bottle of hope" is the headline in the Daily Mirror, which says Britain will have doses for five million people by the end of this year - if it is approved by regulators.
image caption"Vaccine discovery: the world celebrates" is the rather jubilant headline on the front page of the i - which also highlights the quote from vaccine developers that it is "a great day for science and humanity".
image caption"One small jab for man..." is the headline in the Daily Mail, which says scientists have hailed the "giant leap for humanity". The Daily Mail reports that the "dramatic announcement" of the first effective Covid vaccine could see life return to normal by spring.
image captionThe Guardian reports that the vaccine was developed by a small German biotechnology company, BioNTech, which worked with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Health editor Sarah Boseley's report claims the performance of the vaccine "far exceeded the expectations of most experts".
image captionThe Daily Express focuses on Prime Minister Boris Johnson's promise that the UK will be at the "front of the pack" to acquire the new vaccine.
image captionBritain has already ordered 40 million doses of the new vaccine, according to the Daily Telegraph. It also says the NHS has plans to create 1,500 vaccination sites within weeks in anticipation of the roll-out and is the only paper to use its front page to display the "priority list" of who will get the first jabs.
image captionHow the vaccine was developed is looked at in detail on the front of the Times, which says 44,000 people enrolled in the global vaccine trial - which ran on three continents. The paper says that the first vaccine was decided "not just by clever science but by German commuters not wearing their masks, US students attending parties they shouldn't have, and Buenos Aires taxi drivers working despite a cough".
image caption"A shot in the arm to beat Covid" is the take in the Metro, which says that news of the vaccine caused stock markets across the world to surge - including London's FTSE 100.
image captionThe impact on the stock markets is also the focus for the Financial Times, which says the vaccine breakthrough "jolted markets around the world" and boosted sectors battered by the pandemic. It says airlines, hotels and aircraft makers were among the biggest winners.
image captionAnd the Daily Star also leads on the vaccine - although it has a slightly different approach. It greets the news that the jab was unveiled by the maker of sex drug Viagra with the headline "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!".

The announcement of what appears to be an effective coronavirus vaccine prompts jubilation and relief across the front pages.

Praise is heaped on the scientists responsible for the vaccine that many hope could prise open a gateway out of the pandemic.

"After 10 months of hell", the Sun says in its editorial, "they seem to have conjured the miracle we needed".

The i describes how researchers at Pfizer and BioNTech worked "around the clock to rescue humanity from purgatory", while the Financial Times underlines their achievement with a reminder that experts first feared that Covid-19 "might defy efforts to develop a preventative drug".

Writing in the Daily Mail, the microbiologist, Prof Hugh Pennington, thinks that Nobel Prizes beckon for the vaccine's creators, who have pulled off an "incredible feat while millions of lives hung in the balance".

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The Guardian profiles the married couple who co-founded BioNTech 12 years ago - and turned it into a business now worth £16bn. The paper says Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin were children of Turkish so-called "guestworkers" who moved to Germany in the late 1960s.

Their enormous success, it suggests, is "balm for the soul" of Germans with Turkish roots who have spent decades "being stereotyped as lowly-educated greengrocers".

Amid the celebrations, others are wary of the challenges still ahead. The Daily Telegraph says that while the vaccine may prevent infection, "it's not clear whether it will produce the vaunted herd immunity needed to protect the majority of the population".

On the Spectator website, Ross Clark highlights a lack of information about possible side effects, and the Daily Express points out that the jab has likely come too late to prevent the second wave of the disease spreading further.

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The Sun reports that the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, is refusing treatment for Covid-19 - after being taken to hospital for the second time in a fortnight.

It says prison medics at HMP Frankland, in County Durham, raised the alarm on Sunday when the 74-year-old's symptoms worsened.

An unnamed source tells the paper that doctors have warned Sutcliffe "they can do nothing for him" if he continues to decline their help.

image captionStudents have seen their studies disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic

According to the i, teachers in England might be asked to choose which GCSE and A Level papers their students sit in each subject next year - and which ones they drop - to make assessment fairer.

The exams watchdog, Ofqual, is considering how best to compensate for lost learning and the fact that schools have covered different parts of the curriculum because of the pandemic.

The government has already insisted that exams in England will go ahead in 2021, albeit slightly later than usual.

And the Daily Mirror says France is finally paying tribute to a six-year-old boy who died a hero in the French Resistance during the Second World War.

Marcel Pinte, who sneaked messages across German lines in a town near Limoges, was accidentally killed by a British submachine gun which went off during a parachute drop of arms in 1944.

His name was never featured on the local war memorial - almost certainly because of his age - but has now been added to the monument, where an Armistice Day service will be held.

Marcel's nephew tells the paper he hopes the story will now be shared "beyond the family circle" and adopted by the French people.