A panel of outside advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to endorse the emergency use of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine.

This will pave the way for the agency to authorise the shot for a nation that has lost more than 285,000 lives to Covid-19.

The FDA is widely expected to authorise emergency use in days. Distribution and inoculations in the United States are expected to begin almost immediately thereafter...