On Wednesday, December 2, the UK approved the Pfizer vaccine to combat the coronavirus. 4o million doses of this vaccine have been ordered to the UK which will vaccinate 20 million people. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines are made in Belgium and have traveled to the UK via the Eurotunnel to a central hub and will be distributed to hospitals around the UK. The first wave of vaccinations is predicted to prevent 99% of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 according to England’s deputy chief medical officer.

On Tuesday, December 8, the first person in the world received the coronavirus vaccine. 90-year-old, Margaret Keenan, received the first of two doses at 6:31 a.m. With her birthday coming up next week, she exclaimed “It’s the best early birthday present I could wish for”. The second person to receive the vaccine was 81 years old, William Shakespeare, who describes his experience by saying “It’s like I’m about to be given a new lease of life, and I cannot wait to get back out there and make myself useful again.”

The order in which people will get vaccinated has been recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and was decided on by the government. First on the list is residents in care homes and the staff of care homes. Next are those who are aged eighty or older and front line health and social care workers. Third, are people aged seventy-five or older. After these people are people seventy and older along with people who are clinically extremely vulnerable. Number five on the list are those who are sixty-five years old and over. After this are those who are 16-65 and have underlying health conditions. Finally, it will be given backward from those aged sixty.

The vaccine is supposed to protect up to 95% against the coronavirus. It has to be given in two doses to build immunity. Twelve days after the first dose is given, immunity begins to build. Twenty-one days after the first dose, the second dose is given. Seven days later, the receiver should have full immunity. The 40 million doses will be given out as quickly as Pfizer can make them in Belgium. The first batch will be rolled out next week. After this, Health Secretary Matt Hancock says, “several million” will be given out throughout December. According to NHS England chief executive Sir Simon Stevens, everyone who is most at risk might not get the vaccine until April.

After the vaccine was approved, Dr. Anthony Fauci, an American physician who is the director of NIAID, criticized the UK’s decision to approve the vaccine saying that they rushed the process and cut corners. Fauci explained how rushing the process would make people fearful of taking the vaccine, explaining “we have enough problems with people being skeptical about taking a vaccine anyway — if we had jumped over the hurdle here quickly and inappropriately to gain an extra week or a week and a half I think that the credibility of our regulatory process would have been damaged.” Later that day, Fauci apologized by saying that the FDA process just takes longer and he “did not mean to imply any sloppiness even though it came out that way.”