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An 82-year-old dialysis patient on Monday became the first person in the world to receive the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca AZN,
and the University of Oxford since it was approved for use in the UK, which is battling a rapid rise in the number of coronavirus cases.
Brian Pinker, a retired maintenance manager, received the photo at 7:30 GMT of nurse Sam Foster at Churchill Hospital in Oxford. “I am so happy to receive the COVID vaccine today and really proud that it is the one that was invented in Oxford,” Pinker said in a statement released by the National Health Service.
More than half a million doses of the vaccine from the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca AZN,
and Oxford University shot will be available from Monday, and tens of millions more will be delivered in the weeks and months to come once the quality of the lots has been verified by the regulator, a declared the government.
The UK government was granted access to 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which was cleared for emergency use by the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, on December 30.
Injections will be delivered to 730 already established vaccination sites across the UK, with more to open this week to bring the total to more than 1,000, the government said in a statement.
“This is a pivotal moment in our fight against this terrible virus and I hope it will give everyone hope that the end of this pandemic is in sight,” said Secretary of Health Matt Hancock.
Hancock’s comments come nearly a month after the UK began rolling out the vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical company Pfizer PFE,
and its German partner BioNTech BNTX,
with over a million people now having received their first dose of the two-dose vaccine.
Last week, the MHRA, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization and four UK chief medical officers agreed to delay the gap between the first and second dose of vaccines, in a bid to protect the most large number of people in the shortest possible time.
The AstraZeneca – Oxford vaccine is easier to transport and store than the Pfizer – BioNTech vaccine, which must be stored at minus 70 degrees until shortly before use, which makes it easier to administer in nursing homes.
The deployment of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine comes amid a resurgence of the outbreak of coronavirus cases in the UK, with more than 50,000 new coronavirus cases recorded for the sixth consecutive day. As of Sunday, 54,990 new infections and 454 deaths were recorded, according to government data.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the national broadcaster the BBC that stricter measures may be needed in parts of the country in the coming weeks to control the rapid spread of the coronavirus which causes COVID-19. “If you look at the numbers, there is no doubt that we are going to have to take more stringent action and we will announce them in due course,” Johnson said. He will set out his plans for England in a televised address Monday at 8 p.m. GMT.
Lily: Slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccine in US could portend more problems
Earlier Monday, Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced new lockdown rules, with a legal obligation for everyone in mainland Scotland to stay at home, except for essential purposes, from midnight tonight until the end of January.
“Thanks to this new variant, [the virus] just learned to run a lot faster, and has certainly picked up the pace over the last couple of weeks, ”Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament.
Meanwhile, some European Union leaders have been criticized for the slowness of their vaccination programs, which began on December 27 using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
BioNTech chief executive Uğur Şahin told German newspaper Der Spiegel that the process in Europe “was certainly not as quick and easy” as in other countries, in part because the EU is not. directly authorized and that Member States have a say.
Lily: Why France’s clumsy COVID vaccination campaign is seen as a Macron fiasco and a failure of the ‘ruling elite’
The French government has pledged to step up the pace of vaccinations after only inoculating just over 350 people with the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine in the first six days, compared to 238,000 for Germany. From Monday, medical staff aged 50 and over in France will receive vaccines. Vaccines in the Netherlands will not be administered until January 8, when the computer system for planning and recording vaccines is ready.
Several European countries are expected to extend their lockdowns in the face of increasing coronavirus cases. France moved to a nighttime curfew in 15 departments on Saturday from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet German heads of state on Tuesday to decide whether to extend the current lockdown beyond January 10.
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