While the rest of us were just going about our daily lives as best we could, adjusting to circumstances well beyond our control and unlike any seen before in our lifetimes, researchers have been burning the midnight oil and then some to create a vaccine to COVID-19.
Now the race to find a safe, effective vaccine appears to have been successful, and in record-shattering time, as the U.K. has officially begun distributing the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to its citizens.
Just a week before turning 91, Keenan became the first person in the world to receive the COVID-19 vaccine outside of a trial when nurse May Parsons at University Hospital in Coventry administered the first of two doses at 6:31 am local time, CNN reported.
"I feel so privileged," she said, according to the NHS. "It’s the best early birthday present I could wish for because I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year after being on my own for most of the year."
She also told the media on hand that the shot went well and that she "wasn't nervous at all," saying it was "wonderful, really," CNN reported.
"This is all for a good cause so I'm so pleased I had it done. This is a terrible, terrible disease so we do want rid of it."
The first batch includes about 800,000 doses, with up to four million more expected by the end of December, Sky News reported.
Those doses will be distributed from about 50 hospital hubs to both those in care homes and to the frontline healthcare workers who face the highest risk of infection with the disease.
Health Minister Matt Hancock emphasized that despite the arrival of the vaccine, restrictions would have to remain in place for some time yet.
"We've got to stick together and we've got to follow the rules," he said, according to The Guardian. "It is no good everybody relaxing now — we've got to hold firm until the vaccination programme has reached enough vulnerable people so that we don't have people dying from coronavirus in the number that we do today."
Both the U.S. and the E.U. have suggested that Britain's regulators acted too quickly, with Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases saying that the U.S. had the "gold standard of regulatory approach" and that the "U.K. did not do it as carefully."
Nevertheless, the vaccine rollout has largely been welcomed around the nation, where COVID-19 has claimed more than 61,000 lives so far.
h/t: CNN,
