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A 90 year old woman in the UK is now the first person in the world to receive a government-approved Covid-19 vaccine backed by robust clinical trials, marking the start of the country’s nationwide mass vaccination campaign.
Margaret Keenan, a grandmother who will turn 91 next week, received the first of 800,000 UK doses from Pfizer and BioNTech based on mRNA. Covid-19 vaccine early Tuesday morning at Coventry University Hospital.
“I feel very privileged to be the first person to be vaccinated against Covid-19”, Keenan said, according to the UK National Health Service. “It’s the best anticipated birthday gift I could wish for because it means that I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the new year after being alone for most of the year.”
The UK granted a temporary emergency use authorization for the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine last week, beating out the US and Europe. in the race to approve a vaccine. The country bought 40 million doses of this version of the two-dose vaccine, which will go to inoculate 20 million people through 2021.
As Vox’s Umair Irfan reported, the UK government is prioritizing vaccination based primarily on age and “how many vaccines would be needed at each level to prevent a death, not necessarily the risk of exposure.” Older people, specifically those who live in healthcare facilities, and the staff working in those places are the first in line to receive the new vaccine, according to the guidelines developed by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) of the country.
After Keenan, the second dose went to, appropriately, 81-year-old William Shakespeare from Warwickshire, which gave the internet a chance to make a lot of bard jokes in addition to celebrating this historic moment. (What if, it’s probably a relative.)
“It could make a difference in our lives from now on, right?” Shakespeare said after receiving the injection.
According to the BBC, around 4 million people in the UK could be vaccinated by the end of this month.
“This marks the beginning of the [National Health Service]”The Herculean task of rolling out vaccines across the UK, in line with its founding mission, to help people based on clinical need, not ability to pay”, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock he said Tuesday.
“And while today is a day to celebrate, there is a lot of work to do,” he added. “We all have to play our role in suppressing the virus until the vaccine can make us safe, and we can all play our role in supporting the NHS to distribute the vaccine across the country.”
The UK experienced one of the worst excess death rates in Europe in the first wave of the pandemic and experienced a deadly second wave this autumn. As of Tuesday, the country has confirmed more than 1.7 million Covid-19 cases and recorded more than 61,000 deaths in its population of roughly 66 million. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself was seriously ill and was hospitalized with Covid-19 in the spring.
Johnson, who recently faced a revolt from his own party over Covid-19 restrictions, may get a much-needed political boost from the UK becoming the first country to approve and prepare to distribute a rigorous-backed vaccine. clinical trials. (China and Russia have already started administering their own Covid-19 vaccines to their populations, but they have done so before large-scale clinical trials have been completed, and serious questions remain about their safety and efficacy.)
After months of disease and lockdowns, the first vaccines in the UK represent good news – a real sign that there will be an end to the pandemic.
The United States is not likely to lag far behind the United Kingdom. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to grant emergency use authorization to the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine as soon as this week, after the FDA reviewed the company’s data on its efficacy, which is approximately 95 percent. That means vaccines could be rolled out in the U.S. before the end of the year, and healthcare workers would be first in line.
But in the UK and elsewhere, the effort to vaccinate populations against Covid-19 is an extraordinarily challenging undertaking, which could face serious logistical hurdles and public mistrust.
Above all, it will take time. The United States is in the most serious phase of the coronavirus pandemic to date, recently establishing records of hospitalization and death in a single day. The approval of a vaccine cannot undo the death and devastation that is happening now.
The speed with which vaccination is approved, less than a year, is remarkable, but it will be many, many months before most people who are not named William Shakespeare receive a dose.
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