'Several million' vaccine doses to arrive in UK by 31 December as 'momentous' COVID fightback begins

The UK is to take delivery of “several million” doses of the coronavirus vaccine before the end of this month, the health secretary has said.

In what has been described as a “momentous” and “truly historic day”, the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was given for the first time on Tuesday morning.

Margaret Keenan, 90, originally from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, was the first person to be given a coronavirus jab as part of the UK’s mass vaccination programme, at University Hospital in Coventry.

She is the first person in the world to have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine outside a clinical trial.

Keenan turns 91 next week and said it was the “best early birthday present”.

The second person vaccinated in Coventry was 81-year-old William Shakespeare, from Warwickshire, who said he was “pleased” to be given the jab.

“I need to say, the staff at this hospital are wonderful,” he added.

Watch: 90-year-old Margaret Keenan receives first COVID jab

She was the first to receive one of 800,000 doses of the vaccine set to be administered in the UK in the coming weeks, but Matt Hancock said more jabs are coming.

He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: “The next scheduled arrival will be next week and the numbers depend on how quickly Pfizer can manufacture it.”

Asked how quickly the vaccine can arrive and in what sort of numbers, he replied: “We’ve got a broad schedule, there will be several million for the UK as a whole, so several hundred thousand for Scotland over the remainder of this month.”

He later told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he hopes “several million” people will have been vaccinated by Christmas.

“As of this morning, right now several dozen people have been vaccinated and by Christmas several million people will have been vaccinated,” he said.

Last week, business secretary Alok Sharma said he hoped there would be “millions” of doses by the end of this year, while NHS Providers said it could be as many as four million.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Hancock wrote: “It’s V-Day. Thank you to everyone who’s made this possible, from @MHRAgovuk clinicians, NHS admin staff, doctors, nurses, everyone who volunteered in the trials and those getting the jab today.

“Let’s get this done!”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Tuesday was a “momentous day in our fight against COVID-19”, while, Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, told BBC Breakfast: “This is a truly historic day, a turning point in this pandemic, another world-first for the NHS, the start of the largest vaccination programme in our history.”

Hancock told Sky News: “I’m feeling quite emotional actually watching those pictures. It has been such a tough year for so many people and finally we have our way through it – our light at the end of the tunnel as so many people are saying.

“And just watching Margaret there – it seems so simple having a jab in your arm, but that will protect Margaret and it will protect the people around her.

“And if we manage to do that in what is going to be one of the biggest programmes in NHS history, if we manage to do that for everybody who is vulnerable to this disease then we can move on.”

Hancock urged people to continue to obey the coronavirus restrictions despite the rollout of a vaccine.

“It’s great news that we are the first country in the world to have this clinically authorised and being able to roll out this programme,” he said.

“And when enough people who are vulnerable to COVID-19 have been vaccinated then, of course, we can lift the restrictions… we think that will be in the spring.

“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.”

The health secretary added he hoped care home residents would start being vaccinated before Christmas.

Hancock also said vaccine reminder cards being issued to patients were “standard NHS reminder cards” for the follow-up appointment for the second dose, and dismissed the idea of so-called “immunity passports”, despite a government minister refusing to rule them out on Monday.

Hancock said: “We are not proposing to have a sort of immunity certificate that allows you to do different things.”

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