Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are expected to receive the Covid-19 within weeks.
Senior sources told the UK Daily mail newspaper the couple will not receive preferential treatment, but will instead ‘wait in line’ to be vaccinated with the first wave of injections to be rolled out in the UK for over-80s and nursing home residents.
The report said the oldest members of Britain’s royal family would reveal their inoculation “to encourage more people to take on the vital shot,” amid fears that some groups will counteract the vaccination efforts. means of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Other senior members of the Royal Family will also be offered vaccines at the same time as others in their age group, to avoid accusations of bias.
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The vaccine, made by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, arrived from Belgium at secure locations in the UK on Sunday.
After quality checks to ensure the injections have been kept at the correct temperature, the images will be made available to 50 hospital centers across the country before being distributed to physician-led vaccination centers that will administer the injections.
Chris Jackson / AP
The Queen and Prince Philip will ‘wait in line’ to get their injections reserved for over-80s in the UK. (File photo)
The UK will become the first Western country to implement a Covid-19 vaccine after regulators approved the Pfizer-BioNTech shot on Wednesday.
The UK government has bought 40 million doses from the companies, enough to inoculate 20 million people on the two-dose regimen. The injections will be given in order of priority, and the first vaccines will go to those in care homes, including workers, and people over 80 years old.
Vaccines are scheduled to arrive in UK hospitals Monday, with the first vaccinations starting Tuesday, according to a separate NHS England release, with patients 80 and older already in hospital or attending appointments there as the first to receive the get a shot, the NHS said.
Any appointments not used for the first priority groups are given to health professionals at high risk of serious illness from Covid-19.
Phil Harris / ap
Other senior members of the royal family will also be offered vaccines at the same time as others in their age group to avoid accusations of bias. (File photo)
“Next week will be a historic moment as we begin vaccination against Covid-19,” Matt Hancock, the UK’s health secretary, said in a statement.
“We are committed to making sure we can overcome significant challenges in vaccinating nursing home residents.”
One of the biggest challenges for the coming weeks will be making sure the vaccine is kept at the right temperature. The shot should be stored at about minus 70 degrees Celsius and can only be moved within that cold chain four times before being used, according to NHS England.
Once thawed, the shot lasts for days. Each box of vaccines, containing five packs of 975 doses, must be manually unpacked and the temperature downloaded to verify that it has not changed during transit.
– Stuff, Bloomberg
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