UK vaccinates 137,000 in first week since shot rollout

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was the first coronavirus shot to be authorised for use by the UK's independent medicines regulator. Patients require two doses, 21 days apart.

AFP

December 16, 2020 / 08:48 PM IST

Source: AP

More than 137,000 people in Britain have received a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine in the week since inoculations began, the government announced on Wednesday.

The Department for Health and Social Care said 137,897 people had received the jab since December 8. Of those, 108,000 were in England, the most populous of the UK's four nations.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson told lawmakers he was "very pleased" with the "good start with the rollout of the vaccination".

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was the first coronavirus shot to be authorised for use by the UK's independent medicines regulator. Patients require two doses, 21 days apart.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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