In a major breakthrough, the UK has authorised Pfizer/BioNTech to make the Chinese coronavirus vaccine available across the country from next week. A report in The Guardian states that the first doses of the vaccine will arrive in the coming days.
The UK has purchased 40 million doses of the vaccine which has shown to have 95% efficiency in final trials. This is enough to vaccinate 20 million people with two shots each. Of these, 10 million doses will arrive soon.
A report in BBC states that the immunisation will start in coming days for people in high priority group. As per the report, care home residents, staff, people over 80 years of age and other healthcare and social care people are in high priority. Once more stock is available, others will also be vaccinated.
Usually, development of vaccine takes years, sometimes as long as decade. However, the coronavirus vaccine has developed within a span of ten months from concept to reality. The world was hit by the pandemic which originated in China sometime in November 2019.
UK is currently 7th most affected country in terms of total positive cases. Almost 60,000 people in UK have lost their lives due to the pandemic.