90-yo woman becomes first person in UK to receive newly-approved Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine

A 90-year-old woman has become the first person in the United Kingdom to be injected with Pfizer’s coronavirus jab who was not part of a clinical trial, as the country begins a mass inoculation program against the illness.

Margaret Keenan, from Northern Ireland, received the vaccine on Tuesday morning. The retired jeweller will take a second dose of the drug in three weeks, and is expected to have full immunisation by early January. 

Footage shows a health worker administering the jab as Keenan sits in a large armchair. Bystanders clapped after she received the vaccine. 

The jab, developed by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Germany-based BioNTech, will be available at 14 locations across the UK starting on Tuesday as the nationwide vaccination program begins. 

Currently, the drug is reserved for 10 categories of high-risk or high-priority individuals, totalling 25 million people. In a controversial decision, the UK government announced that NHS workers, who for months were promised that they would be first in line to receive the jab, would not be a top priority. 

The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, enough to inoculate 20 million people.

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