UK rolls out vaccine, 90-year-old woman first in line

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  UK becomes first in world to make Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available for widespread use as mass inoculation begins.

Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old grandmother from Britain, has become the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine outside of a trial following its rapid clinical approval.

An early riser, Keenan received the jab at her local hospital in Coventry, central England, on Tuesday morning at 06:31 GMT, a week before she turns 91.

“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,” said Keenan.

The UK began rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, dubbed “V-Day”, the first Western country to start vaccinating its general population in what was hailed as a decisive watershed in defeating the coronavirus.

On Saturday, Russia began vaccinating thousands of doctors, teachers and others at dozens of centres in Moscow with its Sputnik V vaccine. That programme is being viewed differently because Russia authorised use of Sputnik V last summer after it was tested in only a few dozen people.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, usually reserved, said he felt “quite emotional”, adding that 70 hospitals in the country would start the vaccine programme.

The mass inoculation will raise hope that the world may be turning a corner in the fight against a pandemic that has crushed economies and killed more than 1.5 million, although ultra-cold storage and tricky logistics will limit its use for now.

The UK has recorded 61,000 COVID-19 related deaths – more than any other country has reported in Europe, and over 1.7 million cases.

Oksana Pyzik, a teaching fellow at University College London’s School of Pharmacy, told Al Jazeera: “It is wrong to take what we would do in a regular year and apply that to this circumstance, because the sense of urgency, the funding and the level of collaboration have enormously shifted – that is what has made this possible.

“We expect that [other] vaccines that are not too far behind.”

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