Not all hope is lost in 2020. Today, the United Kingdom started mass inoculating its elderly citizens along with medical workers with the world’s first fully tested vaccine against COVID-19 by Pfizer-BioNTech.
Margaret Keenan, who lives in Coventry in central England who turns 91 next week received an early birthday present becoming the first person to receive said vaccine through Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).
Keenan, who was glad to have received the vaccine so she could finally be with her family after almost a year of being alone, is only eclipsed by the second person to be vaccinated named William Shakespeare.
Keenan and Shakespeare are two of the recipients of the first 80,000 doses, which will be administered to doctors, nurses, people over 80 years old and nursing home workers in the UK.
According to Pfizer, the vaccine needs to be stored in South Pole-like temperatures for five days before it can be transferred to a normal refrigerator.
A fantastic moment! And great to see that the vaccine is administered by Nurse May Parsons from the Philippines – one of the many thousands of Filipino healthcare workers making such an enormous contribution to the #NHS https://t.co/t1T5Wy8IzO
— Daniel Pruce 🇬🇧 (@DanielPruce) December 8, 2020
Based on a New York Times report, the nurse who administered the vaccine to Keenan, May Parsons, originally came from the Philippines and has been working with NHS for the past 24 years. British ambassador to the Philippines and Palau, Daniel Pruce also confirmed this in a tweet.
Header image courtesy of NHS
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