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Margaret Keenan was the first patient in the UK to receive the vaccine. It was directed by May Parsons at a university hospital in Coventry, England. A loan… A picture of the pool, taken by Jacob King.
On Tuesday, the British National Health Service began providing images of Pfizer’s BioNTech Covid 19 vaccine, launched a public health campaign unprecedented in modern medicine and made the British people the first in the world to receive a fully tested and approved vaccine.
Early Tuesday morning, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan, a former jewelry assistant, became the first person in the world to receive a clinically approved and fully tested coronavirus vaccine. She was injected into a hospital in Coventry, central England.
According to a press release from the National Health Service, she got back on her feet very early.
I consider it a privilege to be the first person to be vaccinated against Covid-19, Keenan said. It means I can finally wait until the New Year to spend time with my family and friends after being alone most of the year.
Six days after British regulators defeated the United States to become the first Western country to approve a coronavirus vaccine in a global sprint to end a pandemic that killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide, health workers began injecting themselves.
Britain received 800,000 doses of the vaccine in its first batch, the government said. The vaccine is packaged in 975 ultra-low temperature dosing trays and has been transported from the production plant in Belgium to government warehouses in the UK and then to hospitals over the past few days.
Fifty hospitals will administer the injections until the government can finalise the plan for their use in nursing homes and doctor’s surgeries. The vaccine must be transported at a temperature comparable to that of the South Pole, although Pfizer says it can be kept in a normal refrigerator for five days before use. The first to receive the vaccine are doctors and nurses, about 80 years of age or older, and home nurses.
In recent days, some doctors and nurses have been asked to make appointments, with the first injections being given to those most at risk of becoming seriously ill. The government has indicated that the first to receive injections will be people over 80 years of age who have already had a doctor’s appointment this week or who are being discharged from certain hospitals.
Matt Hancock, the Minister of Health, said Monday that all parts of Britain now have doses.
Residents of nursing homes, which should become the government’s top priority, will be vaccinated in the coming weeks as soon as health authorities begin distributing doses outside hospitals.
Fearing an imminent split between Britain and the European Union that could be caused by the shipment of the vaccine from Belgium to British warehouses, the government said this week that it was willing to ask the army to bring the doses across the border.
This is such an important product, perhaps the most important, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Monday. We will therefore ensure that these stocks are available in the UK under all circumstances.
Mrs Keenan, a grandmother of four, spoke about the campaign being conducted in the UK to persuade people who have doubts about the vaccine to get it: My advice to anyone who offers the vaccine If I can get it at 90, you can get it.
She was shot and killed by May Parsons, a nurse from the Philippines who had worked for the National Health Service for 24 years.
The last few months have been difficult for all of us at N.H.S., she said, but now it seems there is light at the end of the tunnel.
A Welsh nurse is preparing for Red Covid-19 at Gloss Clvid Hospital in May. Nurses, doctors, nursing home staff and people over 80 will be the first to receive coronavirus vaccines in the UK. Credit…Christopher Furlong/Getty Pictures
On Tuesday, a handful of people in the UK – most of them over 80 years old – will receive a new approved Pfizer vaccine. This will be the first day of vaccination in a western country.
Hilary Nelson, 45, a nurse in intensive care at Fort Valley Royal Hospital in Scotland, who is also a member of the Nurses Association, said it was important to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
I want the vaccine to protect my colleagues, my family, but especially the patients we care for, she said.
She hopes to set an example to other people in the country, especially those who have doubts about the safety of the vaccine because they know the extent of the damage caused by this disease.
I’ve sat with dying patients and had to call their relatives, she said.
You know I had some questions and I read about it, she said. I’ve asked my questions, and I’m sure it’s safe.
John Pollard, 90, was surprised to hear that he was one of the first patients in the UK to be offered the vaccine.
Over the years I’ve received all kinds of vaccinations, he said. I never thought about it. I was just thinking about not taking covid. Because he lives alone, his daughter takes him to a nearby hospital in Brighton for a vaccination.
He plans to spend this Christmas at his daughter’s house and has high expectations for the new year: If and when I feel well enough, I can go to Australia.
Dr Matt Morgan, 40, who works at the I.C.U. at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, made an appointment Tuesday afternoon. He had the first Covid-19 patient admitted to his hospital 38 weeks earlier and said everything was fine. He was proud that science, humanity, the power of globalization, reason, and truth produced the vaccine in anticipation of his appointment on Tuesday. It’s been a very long year.
New coronavirus patients are still regularly treated in his hospital, and he described this fall’s second wave of infection as a marathon, not a sprint.
Although he had hoped for a new vaccine, he was afraid that people might confuse the beginning of the vaccination with the end of the pandemic.
People are still dying between now and spring, Dr Morgan said. There will also be families who will spend Christmas alone. Well, you know, that doesn’t make everything normal in one day.
In the United Kingdom the card is issued to patients after a COVID 19 vaccination at Croydon University Hospital in South London, as the vaccination starts on Tuesday…Credit…Picture of Gareth Fuller’s swimming pool.
On Tuesday, the British National Health Service began administering Pfizer BioNTech injections, launching a public health campaign unparalleled in modern medicine.
Here you will find a guide with some of the basic principles.
Should I be concerned about the safety of vaccines in the UK?
The UK Medicines Agency is regarded as an agency and its decisions often have influence abroad. In the case of Pfizer’s vaccine, the agency stated that it had not reduced its activities and had undertaken the same cumbersome process of monitoring the quality, efficacy and protocols of the vaccine.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a leading U.S. expert on infectious diseases, said last week that the British have not examined the vaccine as thoroughly as the United States. But he came back the next day with comments and said that I am very sure of what the UK is doing, both from a scientific and a regulatory point of view.
Who in the UK gets the vaccine first?
Doctors and nurses, people over 80 and home nurses.
When can I return to normal functioning after my vaccination?
Only when society as a whole is sufficiently protected against the coronavirus will life return to normal. Once countries allow vaccination, they can only vaccinate a small percentage of their citizens in the first months.
Once enough people have been vaccinated, it will be very difficult for the virus to find people who are likely to be infected. By the autumn of 2021, life can get closer to normal.
If I have been vaccinated, should I still wear a mask?
Yeah, but not forever. Two vaccines that may be approved this month will protect people from Covid 19 disease. However, the clinical trials that led to these results were not intended to determine whether people who had been vaccinated could still spread the virus without developing symptoms.
Does it hurt? What are the side effects?
Vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech are available just like other conventional vaccines. The injection won’t be any different than what you’ve done so far. Tens of thousands of people have already been vaccinated and none have reported serious side effects. Some people experience pain and dark symptoms that last less than a day.
Does the vaccine affect fertility?
There is no evidence that this is the case and there are good reasons to assume that it is not.
It is claimed on the Internet that coronavirus vaccines can affect women’s reproductive function. The alleged evidence is based on the fact that most coronavirus vaccines work by producing antibodies that attack the spiked viral protein, and this protein bears little resemblance to the critical protein for the placenta.
However, this does not mean that the antibodies produced by the coronavirus vaccines will attack the placenta of a pregnant woman. The area of the placenta protein that resembles a backbone is too short to contain the antibodies.
Trump’s administration has reportedly rejected Pfizer’s offer to purchase additional doses of vaccine. The loan… Doug Mills/New York Times…
Before Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine was proven in clinical trials last month, the company offered Trump the opportunity to block shipments of more than 100 million doses, which the pharmaceutical company wanted to sell to the government a few months ago as part of a $1.95 billion deal.
But according to people familiar with the negotiations, the government has never reached an agreement – a decision that now raises the question of whether the United States has allowed other countries to take their place.
Since the government is trying to buy more vaccine, President Trump plans to issue an executive order on Tuesday announcing that other countries will not receive US supplies until the Americans have been vaccinated.
But the order doesn’t seem to have any real power and doesn’t increase U.S. supplies of cans, according to the order’s description, which was released Monday by senior government officials.
The vaccine produced by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech is a two-dose therapy, which means that 100 million doses are enough to vaccinate only 50 million Americans. The vaccine is expected to be approved for emergencies in the United States this weekend and another vaccine developed by Moderna is expected to be approved for emergencies in the near future.
Britain plans to launch a vaccination campaign on Tuesday with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, making it the first Western country to launch a mass vaccination.
11. In November – two days after Pfizer announced the first results indicating that its vaccine is more than 90% effective – the European Union announced an agreement with Pfizer and BioNTech for the supply of 200 million doses, an agreement they had begun negotiations on several months earlier. Deliveries can start before the end of the year and the contract includes an option for an additional 100 million boxes.
When asked whether Trump’s policy missed a crucial opportunity to increase the dose for Americans, a spokesman for the Department of Health replied: We are confident that we will have 100 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, as agreed in our contract, and we have five additional candidates for the vaccine.
In July, the government had the possibility to request between 100 and 500 million extra doses. But despite repeated warnings from Pfizer officials that demand could far outstrip supply, and despite calls to pre-order more boxes, the Trump policy rejected supply, as explained by several people familiar with the discussions.
In its announcement, Pfizer stated that all additional doses in excess of $100 million would be subject to a separate, mutually acceptable agreement and that the company would not have the opportunity to comment on confidential discussions with the U.S. government.
Most of the global supply of vaccines has already been declared by rich countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Europe, leading to criticism that people are lagging behind in low and middle income countries. The United States has refused to participate in a global initiative called Kovacs to make the vaccine available worldwide.
The decision to issue the order was previously reported by Fox News.
Medical staff at Lincoln Community Hospital in Hugo, Colorado, Tuesday. The loan… Stephen Speranza for the New York Times.
The United States recorded the highest number of corona-related deaths in a week, while violence increased across the country.
With an average of 2,249 deaths in seven days in the first weeks of the pandemic, the country exceeded the level of the previous year on 17 January. April the previous figure of 2,232 dead. Seven-day averages can give a more accurate picture of the evolution of the virus than daily mortality rates, which can fluctuate and mask a broader trend line.
According to the New York Times database, the United States of America is approaching 300,000 deaths and the number of reported deaths is close to 283,000. On average there are almost 200,000 deaths a day, 15% more than two weeks ago, and a total of more than 15 million deaths.
A lot has changed compared to the previous peak in April. The coronavirus is no longer concentrated in large cities such as New York and now covers most of the country, including the rural areas that have been avoiding it for several months.
Many of the provinces most affected per capita are now in the Central West. North Dakota, where one in ten people are infected with the virus, has the highest total incidence, followed by South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska.
The last wave to hit the United States set a record. Since the 2nd. In December, more than 100,000 Covid-19 patients are admitted to hospital every day. That is much more than the number of people admitted to hospital during the spring and summer peaks, when at worst about 60,000 Americans a day were hospitalized.
The new peak also comes when the country is preparing for parties and when lower temperatures can cause people to gather indoors. Infectious disease experts warned that trends in the U.S., which recorded a record 2,885 deaths on Wednesday, could worsen in the coming weeks.
Contrary to the health authorities’ warnings, millions of Americans have come out for Harvest Day, fuelling fears that this month’s Thanksgiving will be accompanied by a new wave of travel.
And even without going far, encounters between people from different households are a risk.
These are ideal scenarios for virus replication, said Dr. Fadi Al-Ahrass, an infectious disease specialist at the Paikeville Medical Center in Kentucky.
Dr. Al Ahrass said that people seemed more willing to accept the weight of the virus than in April, but that everyone had learned the hard way.
The value of Christmas is what we give, not what we take, is what we should consider at this time of year, he said. Not having large meetings would probably be the best gift.
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