A YouGov poll in December showed that 85% of
Britons thought they had insufficient information about
Covid-19 vaccines, their safety and so on. Welcome to Coronavirus – Part 3.
V-day arrived
At
6:30 GMT on 8
December 2020 at University Hospital, Coventry, a 90-year-old woman
originally from Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, became the
first person in the world to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine outside of
clinical trial conditions.
Margaret
Keenan,
whose name is forever destined to be the answer in various
quizzes, turned 91 the following week. The jolly
grandmother turned up for her jab and global photo call in a
natty Christmas penguin T-shirt and said it was, ‘… the best
early birthday present I could wish for.’ She urged everyone,
‘Go for it because it’s free.’
The second recipient was an 81-year-old man with the
improbable name of William Shakespeare from - I kid you not -
Warwickshire. Journalists
insisted that he felt the jab was ‘much ado about nothing’. Everybody wanted
their say on this extraordinary occasion. The optimistic
health secretary, Matt Hancock, wanted all to know that he had
already booked his 2021 holiday – in Cornwall. It was left to the
realistic Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser,
to caution, ‘It may be that next winter, even with
vaccination, we need measures like masks in place. We don’t know yet
how good all the vaccines are going to be at preventing the
transmission of the virus.’
This historic, triumphant
and even jocular day marked the official start of the UK's
biggest ever mass vaccination programme.
On 4 January, Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old
dialysis patient, became the first person to receive the
Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
The retired maintenance manager got the newly-approved
vaccine at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital.
To be continued!