Now that COVID-19 vaccines are out
Published 20 December 2020
THE United Kingdom became the first Western nation to begin mass vaccination against the coronavirus disease with 90-year-old pensioner, Margaret Keenan, the first person to receive the vaccine outside of clinical trials. It was a major step in the journey to kick out the pandemic, which has killed more than 1.66 million people worldwide. At least 74.95 million people have contracted the virus, though the number of cases is believed to be much higher than that.
There are currently more than 50 COVID-19 vaccine candidates in trials. The United States’ Centre for Disease Control says as of November 24, 2020, large-scale (Phase 3) clinical trials are in progress or being planned for three COVID-19 vaccines in the country (AstraZeneca’s COVID-19, Janssen’s COVID-19 and Moderna’s COVID-19). The UK government had since July signed deals for 90 million doses of promising coronavirus vaccines being developed – 30 mill