The British government said on Thursday (24th) that 600,000 British citizens have been vaccinated with Pfizer’s BioNTech vaccine since the COVID-19 vaccination started in the UK earlier this month.
According to data released by the British Ministry of Health, since the start of vaccination from December 8 to December 20, 616,933 British citizens have been vaccinated.
Earlier this month, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to approve Pfizer’s BioNTech vaccine. A total of 40 million doses of Pfizer vaccines are currently ordered in the UK. British Health Minister Matt Hancock said that it is expected to receive millions of doses before the end of this year.
There are currently more than 500 vaccination sites in the UK, and citizens over 80 years of age and health care workers are given priority for vaccination.
Hancock also said on Wednesday that British drugmaker AstraZeneca has submitted complete data on the company’s vaccine to the British drug regulatory agency. British authorities said on Thursday that they have begun to analyze the data and will make a decision in the shortest possible time.
The discovery of a new variant of the virus in the UK last weekend has plunged London and other areas into stricter anti-epidemic lockdown measures. The mutated virus strain “B.1.1.7” increased the infectivity of the virus by 70% and became more infectious to children, leading to stricter Level 4 epidemic prevention restrictions in the country. During the busiest shopping season of the year, Many shops were forced to close. At the same time, more than 40 countries have issued flight bans on the United Kingdom, which will affect the country’s cargo and the transportation of certain food to the United Kingdom.
Philip Rush, chief economist of the research company Heteronomics, said that the new anti-epidemic lockdown measures are likely to continue into the first few months of next year, which may lead to a double-dip recession in the UK.
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