82-Year-Old Becomes First In The World To Receive Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine
The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine has began to be administered in the UK today, January 4, with 82-year-old Brain Pinker being the first to receive it.
The vaccine was approved for use on Wednesday, December 30, by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), making it the second vaccine in the UK to be approved.
Now the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has started to be rolled out, Brian Pinker in Oxford was the first person to be administered it.
The retired maintenance manager received the vaccine bright and early at 7.30am this morning at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital.
Speaking of getting the vaccine, Mr Pinker said, as per BBC News, ‘The nurses, doctors and staff today have all been brilliant and I can now really look forward to celebrating my 48th wedding anniversary with my wife Shirley later this year.’
Along with hospital trusts in Oxford being to give the newest vaccine, trusts in London, Sussex, Lancashire and Warwickshire are also beginning to administer it today with 530,000 doses ready for use.
Today marks the first day Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine is being rolled out in Northern Ireland, too.
While the new vaccine’s rollout has been described as a ‘pivotal moment’ in the fight against the virus by health secretary Matt Hancock, he added that the UK is facing ‘a tough few weeks ahead’.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Hancock added:
It’s thanks to British science and backed by the government and AstraZeneca as well, who deserve a lot of credit for the work they have done, that we’ve managed to get to this point.
5 months agoHe continued, ‘I’m just really pleased that the NHS is able to start this vaccination programme’, and pointed out the UK is the first country to get to this point once again by having this ‘easy-to-administer vaccine’ rolled out.
The first vaccine to be approved was by Pfizer-BioNTech on December 2 which began to be rolled out just days later. 90-year-old Margaret Keenan was the first person in the world to receive it.
While the vaccines are being rolled out across the UK, the government is under pressure to enforce yet another national lockdown.
Yesterday, January 3, Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party called for the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to put another lockdown in place within the next 24 hours and described the state of the virus as ‘clearly out of control’.
It’s currently unknown if Johnson plans on putting the UK into a third national lockdown, but he has warned that the current tiering system is ‘about to get tougher’.
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Topics: Health, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Now, UK, Vaccination
