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An 81-year-old man became the second person to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the UK on Tuesday, but he gained worldwide attention for his name: William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare, a native of Warwickshire, the county where the famous English poet was born, received his chance at Coventry University Hospital. Shortly after receiving the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, Shakespeare said it was “groundbreaking” for him to get one.
“It could make a difference in our lives from now on, right?” he said. “It has started to change our lives and our lifestyle.”
The first 800,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the UK go to people over 80 who are hospitalized or already scheduled outpatient appointments, along with nursing home workers. The UK is getting ahead of the project after British regulators gave emergency clearance on December 2 to the vaccine produced by US drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. The first recipient was Grandmother Margaret Keenan, who will turn 91 next week.
As for Shakespeare, the octogenarian’s name elicited a lighthearted response from many puns, mostly online, on the late Shakespeare’s plays, such as “The Taming of the Shrew” and “The Two Knights of Verona.”
One user referenced “Hamlet” in a cheep on England’s most popular patient: “If Margaret Keenan is patient 1A for the vaccine, William Shakespeare would be 2B, or not 2B …”
In response to a tweet, a woman who claimed to be Shakespeare’s niece said she would like to see her family soon.
“That’s my lovely uncle you’re talking about,” he said. “And at some point he would like to see his wife, children and grandchildren who cannot visit him at this time. A very worthy recipient.”
UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock apparently shed a tear in a television interview upon learning that Shakespeare received his vaccine.
“It’s been such a difficult year for so many people and William Shakespeare puts it so simply, for all of us, that we can get on with our lives,” he said.
Authorities in the United States and the European Union are also reviewing the vaccine that Shakespeare took, along with rival products developed by the American biotechnology company Moderna and through a collaboration between the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
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