The UK will launch the world’s first mass inoculation of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination this week, having ordered 40 million doses of the newly developed vaccine. 

Health officials will begin administering the drug in hospitals, before distributing stock to doctor’s clinics. 

The first set of vaccinations are set to be rolled out on Tuesday, with priority going to those over 80, frontline healthcare workers, and care at home staff and patients.

Brexit negotiations are ongoing between the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Commission president Ursula Von Der Leyen but haven’t come to a successful conclusion yet, despite the fact they have been negotiating the whole of last week.

The decision of what trading relations will look like early 2021 is still not complete, as they released a statement that said issues of fishing rights, competition rules and how any deal is enforced still needed to find common ground.

Both leaders will speak tonight to debrief the situation.

More than 60,000 koalas were impacted by the devastating bushfires that swept across the country last summer, with total numbers of wildlife affected estimated to be 3 billion.

A new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) revealed that 143 million mammals were killed or lost their habitat last summer.

Chief executive of WWF Australia, Dermot O’Gorman, said that it is hard to think of an event in living memory that has caused this much impact on wildlife and nature.

In 26 May 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced his plan to reform the industrial relations system in response to the pandemic, but the Australian Council of Trade Unions seems to believe the government would have no intention of addressing the issue of insecure work.

In a statement released this morning, ACTU Secretary Sally McManus said the Industrial Relations Omnibus legislation would take the rights of casual workers backwards as it would make it almost impossible for them to convert to permanent work.

As part of its 5Oth anniversary celebrations, James Cook University has given its Cairns’ campuses local Indigenous names to acknowledge the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the advancement of the University.

JCU’s Smithfield campus has been named Nguma-bada, which means belonging to tomorrow: "Place for tomorrow's learning, knowledge and wisdom" from the Yirrgay coastal dialect of Djabugay.

Extinction Rebellion protesters staged a protest in Brisbane CBD this morning, sitting on top of a stationary rental truck parked at the intersection of Edward and Queen Street.  

Fire and Rescue extracted the protestors from the top of the truck by using a cherry picker. 

Traffic has started to ease along Adelaide street, Edward Street and Queen street.

Facing global anger over their mishandling of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities have been trying to shift the blame by pushing theories that the virus originated outside China.

The Chinese state-run media first published that it started in Italy rather than in China as they misrepresented German scientist Dr Kekulé’s research, to then switch the blame to India after scientists published a paper about packaged food from overseas having brought the virus to China.

What is clear, is China's eagerness to “muddy the waters”.

US President Donald Trump has announced on Twitter that his lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has tested positive for coronavirus.

Mr Trump wished Mr Giuliani a quick recovery, and claimed he has been “working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA.”

There have been more than 14 million COVID-19 cases recorded in the United States, with over 280,000 deaths.

NSW Police have admitted that they incorrectly let two German travellers transit to Melbourne without undergoing Hotel Quarantine in Sydney. 

Police state there was a ‘language barrier’, between the two travelers and Airport security, who thought they were exempt from Hotel quarantine and escorted them to board their Melbourne flight.

The pair are currently in hotel quarantine in Victoria, and have tested negative for COVID-19.