Vaccination against the coronavirus has started in the Re …

From London

Nail 90 year old woman, Margaret Keeanan, became on Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. in the first person to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in the west, the first to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the UK. The grandmother with 4 grandchildren, who retired 4 years ago from her job as a jewelry clerk, thanked the National Health Service (NHS) and recommended that the population inoculate. “I feel very privileged to be the first person to be vaccinated against covid-19, it is a premature birthday present. I hope that next year I can spend more time with my family and friends. after being alone for so long, ”Keegan told Sky Network.

Keegan y the nurse who vaccinated her, May Parsons, once entered the celebrity pantheon with their statements to the media. The nurse spoke of the “great honor” of being the first in the UK to administer the vaccine. “I am happy to participate in this historic day. The past few months have been very tough at the National Health Service. There is finally light at the end of the tunnel, ”Parsons said.

This week vaccines will be applied in 50 UK hospitals to the first segment of the population: people over 80 in nursing homes and related social and health workers.. Next week, vaccination centers will be expanded with the State National Health Service GP offices system which covers all districts and towns in the UK.

By this December, it is estimated that there will be two million doses ready for vaccination, enough for a million people.. Once the first sector of the population is covered, it will continue with eight more divided by age and degree of exposure and vulnerability. The over 80s and health and social services workers come second, followed by those over 75 and then in descending order of age to cover those over 50 and those between 16 and 64 at clinical risk.

Minister of Health Matt Hancock He was excited and happy about “this triumph of science and human creativity”, but warned the population not to give up. “We must continue to play by the rules. We don’t need to relax now. We need to make sure that the immunization program reaches enough vulnerable people that we don’t have the number of deaths that we have today, ”Hancock said.

One of the issues of greatest concern to the authorities is the logistics of applying the Pfizer vaccine. The vaccine should be stored at minus 70 degrees: in a normal refrigerator it has a maximum shelf life of five days. Refrigerators of this capacity – larger than that used to transport frozen food – are scarce in the UK and in developed countries and in short supply in developing countries. The process of thawing the vaccine and breaking up batches containing 975 doses into more manageable units at vaccination centers is one of the keys to overcoming this logistical hurdle.

Even so, it’s a day of optimism in the UK, similar in football terms to the euphoria of the first goal in a very difficult game which in more than a moment seemed lost. England emerged from a month of national confinement last Wednesday to switch to a slightly more flexible regime for 99% of the population which will be reviewed on December 17 before the arrival of the Christmas period. This Monday, there were more than 17,000 new cases: December 2 was the peak of deaths with 603 deaths. In this context, the vaccine is a breath of fresh air that allows for moderate optimism in a gloomy year. The authorities believe that between Pfizer and the other vaccines approved in the coming weeks, the entire population will have been vaccinated before Easter.

This euphoria led to the first complex. In recent days, the media have constantly talked about the first vaccination against the coronavirus: very few said that the vaccination started in Russia on Saturday. In many places, the memory of the Cold War is still warm.