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Nearly 138,000 people across the UK have been vaccinated against Covid-19 since the rollout began last week, the government announced.
Nadhim Zahawi, the minister overseeing the deployment, said the figures were “a very good start for the vaccination program.”
It began last Tuesday, December 8, when 70 hospitals began to immunize people over 80 years of age, nursing home workers and some of the NHS staff.
Fast guide
How does the Pfizer / BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine work?
The Pfizer / BioNTech Covid vaccine is an mRNA vaccine. Essentially, mRNA is a molecule used by living cells to convert the sequences of genes in DNA into proteins that are the building blocks of all its fundamental structures. A segment of DNA is copied (“transcribed”) into a fragment of mRNA, which in turn is “read” by the cell’s tools to synthesize proteins.
In the case of an mRNA vaccine, the mRNA of the virus is injected into the muscle and our own cells read it and synthesize the viral protein. The immune system reacts to these proteins, which by themselves cannot cause disease, as if they had been transmitted by the entire virus. This generates a protective response that studies suggest lasts for some time.
The first two Covid-19 vaccines that announced the results of the phase 3 trial were based on mRNA. They were the first to get out of the blocks because as soon as the genetic code for Sars-CoV-2 was known, it was published by the Chinese in January 2020, companies that had been working on this technology were able to start producing the mRNA. of the virus. Manufacturing conventional vaccines takes much longer.
Adam Finn, Professor of Pediatrics at the Bristol Children’s Vaccine Center, University of Bristol
A week later, 108,000 people in England have received the first of their two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, as have 18,000 people in Scotland, 7,897 in Wales and 4,000 in Northern Ireland.
137,897 people have been vaccinated, Zahawi tweeted.
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