Covid-19 Live Updates: Britain Begins Vaccinating Citizens
Britain has become the first nation to begin a mass inoculation campaign using a fully tested vaccine, kicking off a global effort to fight Covid-19. Doctors, nurses, certain people over 80 and nursing home workers will be among the first to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
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First Briton to be vaccinated: ‘If I can have it at 90, then you can have it, too!’
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Pfizer’s vaccine debuts in Britain as the world’s first fully tested vaccine.
Britons prepare to get vaccinated.
As Britain begins vaccinations, here are answers to some common questions.
Pfizer’s vaccine debuts in Britain as the world’s first fully tested vaccine.
The Royal Free Hospital in North London is one of the hospitals that will start administering the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday.
The Royal Free Hospital in North London is one of the hospitals that will start administering the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Britain’s National Health Service began delivering shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday, opening a public health campaign with little precedent in modern medicine and making Britons the first people in the world to receive an authorized, fully tested vaccine.
Health workers began administering the shots six days after British regulators leapt ahead of the United States to become the first Western country to authorize a coronavirus vaccine, part of a global sprint to end a pandemic that has killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide.
In its first batch, Britain has received 800,000 doses of the vaccine, the government said. Packed in 975-dose trays at ultracold temperatures, the vaccine has been transported in recent days from a manufacturing plant in Belgium to government warehouses in Britain, and then to hospitals.
Fifty hospitals will be administering the shots until the government can refine a plan for delivering them at nursing homes and doctor’s offices, too. The vaccine must be transported at South Pole-like temperatures, though Pfizer has said that it can be stored for five days in a normal refrigerator before being used. First to receive the vaccine will be doctors and nurses, certain people over 80 and nursing home workers.
Some doctors and nurses have received invitations in recent days to sign up for appointments, with the first shots intended for those at the highest risk of severe illness. The government has indicated that people over 80 who already have visits with doctors scheduled for this week, or who are being discharged from certain hospitals, will also be among the first to receive shots.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said on Monday that “all parts of the U.K. now have doses.”
Nursing home residents, who were supposed to be the government’s top priority, will be vaccinated in the coming weeks once health officials start distributing doses beyond hospitals.
Amid concerns about Britain’s looming split from the European Union snarling the transport of the vaccine from Belgium to British warehouses, the government said this week that it was prepared to ask the Army to fly doses over the border.
“This is such an important product, it’s probably perhaps the most important product,” James Cleverly, a Foreign Office minister, said on Monday. “So we will look to ensure that those supplies are available in the U.K. in whatever circumstance.”
— Benjamin Mueller The New York Times