Covid-19 vaccine: ‘Hopefully next year we will be living a normal life’

The first Covid vaccines

have started to take place across the UK.

Throughout the morning, patients and health workers in some 50 hospitals across the country have suffered the blow.

Grandma Margaret Keenan initially thought it was a joke when hospital staff told her that she would be the first person to receive the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.

“It hasn’t sunk yet,” he said. “Right now I don’t know how I feel, so strange and so wonderful actually.”

Ms. Keenan, who will turn 91 next week, said it was “the best anticipated birthday gift I could wish for.”

“It means that I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the new year after being alone most of the year,” she added.

She said she did not care about the media attention and was not nervous about being vaccinated.

Hopefully it will help other people to come and do what I did, and try to do their best to get rid of this terrible thing.

Dr Hari Shukla was the first of around 100 people to get vaccinated in Newcastle, along with his wife Ranjan.

“I am proud to have had this privilege to participate in this very important activity,” he said.

“I don’t take this for granted because hundreds of people have worked for this vaccine day and night to make sure we get the vaccines on time so that people’s lives can be saved.”

Dr Shukla was born in Uganda and came to the UK in 1974. He was Director of the Tyne and Wear Racial Equality Council, and has been honored with a CBE and named a Hero of the City of Newcastle for his work on race relations.

He said he wanted to use his position in the community to tell others that the vaccine was safe.

“I’m saying do it. It’s very important that you have it, it’s wonderful and the way it’s produced, all the work they’ve done, it’s the best vaccine you can have.”

Jack Vokes, 98, has cancer and has been in the hospital for five weeks, but will soon be able to go home.

He described being the first person to be vaccinated in Bristol as “a bit of a thrill.”

Vokes lives alone and hopes the vaccine will allow him to see more members of his family, including his six granddaughters.

“I care more about my family than about myself,” he said.

“I live with the hope that by the middle of next year we will be living a normal life.”

Mick Newell, who works in operating rooms at Salford Royal Infirmary, contracted Covid-19 in February and was quickly admitted to the ICU.

“I was cared for by my colleagues for nine days,” he recalled. “It was a pretty scary moment.”

He said of the NHS vaccination program: “It’s amazing isn’t it? There are people who have been protecting themselves at home since February, this offers them some hope, they can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel.

“They will start to go back to a semblance of life and take us to whatever this new normal is.”

Newell, 60, said just because the vaccine is new doesn’t mean it should be ruled out. “We must put our trust in the NHS as we do every day,” he added.

After receiving the vaccine at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, 81-year-old Kathleen Viney said she would not be so afraid to leave home.

“It will mean that I can go out more because at this point I have been completely homebound and have almost no social life and now I will feel a little more secure,” she said.

“It will be nice to go out to eat and be able to do some shopping.”

Ms. Viney was going to the hospital for a cancer checkup and said it took her “about two seconds” to make a decision when she was offered the vaccine.

“It would be very silly not to,” he said. “There is nothing to fear.”

Sister Joanna Sloan, a 28-year-old nurse from Dundrum in County Down, said she felt “privileged” to be the first person to receive the vaccine in Northern Ireland.

“This feels like the last hurdle to keeping people safe, me and everyone around me,” he told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster.

Sloan, who will lead the launch of the vaccine in Belfast, had to postpone her wedding due to the pandemic.

Now she is eager to tell her five-year-old daughter about the vaccine.

“I want her to be proud, I want all my family and friends to be proud,” he said.