Covid vaccine: 138,000 people in UK get Pfizer jab in first week
Almost 138,000 people in the UK received the coronavirus vaccine last week, the government has announced, after ministers came under pressure for failing to track the details of the vaccination programme.
Tweeting the figures this morning, newly-appointed vaccine tsar Nadhim Zahawi said: “A really good start to the vaccination program.”
Zahawi said the number of doses administered over the last seven days was:
- 108,000 in England
- 7,897 in Wales
- 4,000 in Northern Ireland
- 18,000 in Scotland
He confirmed there have been 137,897 vaccines given across the UK so far.
The figure means around 2,800 people have been vaccinated in each of the 50 hospital hubs distributing the vaccine across the UK.
“That number will increase as we have operationalised hundreds of PCN (primary care networks)” in GP surgeries, Zahawi added.
It comes after ministers came under pressure yesterday for failing to produce statistics on the progress of Britain’s largest ever vaccination programme.
A government official told Politico that “no one has a f***ing clue” how many people have had the vaccine since the rollout began.
Ninety-year-old Margaret Keenan last week became the first person in the world to receive a coronavirus vaccine outside of a trial, marking the rollout of the UK’s largest vaccination effort in history.
Around 800,000 doses are expected to be available in the UK by the end of the week, with care home residents and carers, the over-80s and some health service workers at the front of the queue.
Health secretary Matt Hancock last week set out the “three modes of delivery” of the vaccine. Hospitals will receive the vaccine first, followed by mass vaccination centres and GPs and pharmacists offering the jab to those most in need.
The hospital hubs set to distribute the vaccine include London hospitals Guys & St Thomas, Kings College Hospital, the Royal Free, St George’s and UCLH.
In total, Britain has ordered 40m doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine — enough to vaccinate 20m people in a country of 67m.
Health officials will turn to other vaccines on the horizon to complete the UK’s vaccination programme, including the Astrazeneca/University of Oxford vaccine, of which the government has ordered 100m doses, and the Moderna vaccine, which the UK is set to receive 7m doses of.