UK: Vaccine patient thought being 1st was 'a joke'

The first UK citizen to be vaccinated against the coronavirus on Tuesday thought "it was a joke" when told she would the first recipient of the COVID vaccine.

Speaking after receiving the injection at University Hospital Coventry, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan added: "now I've done and hopefully it will help other people to come around and do as I did."

The UK is getting a head start on the project after British regulators on December 2 gave emergency authorization to the vaccine produced by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

The first shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were delivered to a selected group of UK hospitals on Sunday.

The vaccine can’t arrive soon enough for the UK, which has more than 61,000 COVID-19-related deaths - more than any other country has reported in Europe.

The UK has more than 1.7 million cases.

The 800,000 doses are only a fraction of what is needed.

The government is targeting more than 25 million people, or about 40% of the population, in the first phase of its vaccination program, which gives first priority to those who are at highest risk from the disease.