
90-year-old grandmother the first person in the world to receive a clinically approved COVID vaccine.
Britain has begun the mass-vaccination of its population against COVID-19, becoming the first Western nation to do so in a global endeavour that poses one of the biggest logistical challenges in peacetime history.
On a day dubbed "V-Day", health workers on Tuesday started inoculating people with a shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, with the country a test case for the world as it contends with distributing a compound that must be stored at -70C.
At 6:31 a.m. on Tuesday, 334 days after the first reported Covid-19 death in China, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive a clinically approved vaccine.
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 8, 2020
📷 Jacob King / Reuters pic.twitter.com/seSUqCr3lp
Margaret Keenan, a grandmother who turns 91 in a week, became the first person in the world to receive the vaccine outside of a trial when she received the shot at her local hospital in Coventry, central England.
"It's the best early birthday present I could wish for because it means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year after being on my own for most of the year," she said.
The country has ordered enough supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot to vaccinate 20 million people. The developers said it was 95 per cent effective in preventing illness in final-stage trials.
Russia and China have both already started giving domestically produced vaccine candidates to their populations, though before final safety and efficacy trials have been completed.
Morocco plans to vaccinate 80 per cent of its adults in a mass vaccination operation due to begin this month, using the Chinese vaccine that's not yet completed advanced trials to prove it is safe and effective.
Critics in Morocco have also expressed concerns that citizens might be forced to take the vaccine, but the health minister insisted that COVID-19 vaccinations will not be mandatory but will be free.https://t.co/V9qoLP8GDE
— FinancialXpress (@FinancialXpress) December 8, 2020
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