BBC: Next week the population vaccine begins in Great Britain

“Help is on the way to”, Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced on Wednesday morning, as UK regulators issued urgent authorization for a vaccine made by the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and her German partner, BioNTech, writes BBC.

A final analysis of the test phase 3 of the vaccine shows it was 95% effective in preventing infections, even older adults, and did not cause serious security concerns, Pfizer said last month.

The announcement means that the United Kingdom has left behind the United States and the European Union in the race to approve a vaccine, months in a pandemic that has killed nearly 1.5 million people worldwide.

“We believe it is really the beginning of the end of the pandemic,” CEO of BioNTech Ugur Sahin CNN told him in an exclusive interview Wednesday. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla hailed emergency authorisation as “a historic moment in the fight against Ovid-19”.

Britain has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine enough to vaccinate 20 million people. Hancock told the BBC that 800,000 initial doses would be submitted by Pfizer's objects in Britain next week, and <x0... a lot of millions” more before the end of the year.

Older people in nursing homes, caregivers, health workers, and other vulnerable people will top the list of priorities.