LONDON (Reuters) – Britain began inoculating its citizens with the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine against COVID-19 on Monday, giving the shot to Brian Pinker, an 82-year-old dialysis patient, at a hospital a few hundred metres away from where the vaccine was developed.
Pinker, a retired maintenance manager, paid tribute to the scientists who had developed the shot, saying he was looking forward to celebrating his wedding anniversary.
“I am so pleased to be getting the COVID vaccine today and really proud that it is one that was invented in Oxford,” he said in a statement released by the health service.
“The nurses, doctors and staff today have all been brilliant and I can now really look forward to celebrating my 48th wedding anniversary with my wife Shirley later this year.”
Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chief investigator into the trial of the shot, also received the vaccine, the National Health Service (NHS) said.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Guy Faulconbridge, editing by Estelle Shirbon)
