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Queen Elizabeth II will reportedly receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine within weeks after UK regulators granted approval with the world’s first roll-out to begin this week.
The monarch, 94, and her 99-year-old husband Prince Philip are in line to get the jab early due to their age and will not receive preferential treatment, the Mail on Sunday reported.
The newspaper said Britain’s most senior royals would reveal they have been given the inoculation “to encourage more people to take up the vital jab”, amid fears so-called anti-vaxxers could dent enthusiasm for it.
The vaccine, created by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, has arrived at secure locations in the UK from Belgium, the Department of Health and Social Care said Sunday.
Following quality checks to ensure the jabs have been kept at the correct temperature, officials say the shots will be made available to 50 hospital hubs around the country, before being distributed to doctor-run vaccination centres that will administer the jabs.
Britain will become the first western country to deploy a Covid-19 vaccine after regulators approved the Pfizer-BioNTech shot last Wednesday. The government has bought 40 million doses from the companies, enough to inoculate 20 million people on the two-dose regimen. The shots will be given in order of priority, with the first vaccines going to those in care homes, including workers, and people over 80 years old.
Vaccines are planned to arrive at hospitals Monday with the first vaccinations starting Tuesday, according to a separate release from NHS England, with patients aged 80 and over who are already in hospital or attending appointments there among the first to receive the jab, the NHS said
“This coming week will be an historic moment as we begin vaccination against Covid-19,” Matt Hancock, the UK’s health secretary, said in a statement. “We are doing everything we can to make sure we can overcome significant challenges to vaccinate care home residents.”
