Approved Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Administered To First Patient

Following its approval for use in the UK, an 82-year-old man was the first to receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19 on the morning of Monday 4 January.

BBC News reports that Brian Pinker, a kidney disease patient on dialysis at Oxford’s Churchill hospital, was the first to receive the jab on Monday morning.

The retired maintenance manager said he was looking forward to spending his 48th wedding anniversary in February with his wife, Shirley.

Next in line for the vaccine was Trevor Cowlett, an 88-year-old music teacher, and the third was Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and a paediatrician working at the Oxford University Hospitals.

53,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab are being rolled out at six hospital trusts in Oxford, Sussex, Lancashire, Warwickshire, and two in London, then the bulk of the supplies will be sent to over 700 GP-led services and care homes.

The government, which has a goal of administering two million vaccines per week, hopes it will deliver tens of millions of doses within months. It is the second vaccine to be rolled out in the UK, after the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was first given to grandmother-of-four Margaret Keenan on 8 December.

“It isn’t about blame, it’s about how we collectively, as a society, keep this under control for the next couple of months… until the vaccines can make us safe,” said Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

“We obviously have the very positive news this morning of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine started to be rolled out – it’s a triumph of British science that we’ve managed to get to where we are, but this new variant does make it so much harder to control the virus in the meantime.”

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