Symbolic cape: half of British adults received first coro …

The United Kingdom has passed a new symbolic milestone in its vaccination campaign. Half of the adult population has received at least a first shot with a corona vaccine, British Health Minister Matt Hancock announced on Saturday.

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“I am absolutely delighted to announce that we have now vaccinated half of all adults in the UK. This is a huge success, ”Hancock said in a video message on the microblogging site Twitter. He thanked everyone involved, including everyone who got vaccinated. “This is so important, because the vaccine is the means to put the pandemic behind us,” said the minister.

In total, more than 26 million Britons have now received a first injection. More than 2 million of them have also been vaccinated a second time. In the United Kingdom, it takes about 12 weeks between the first and second vaccination.

The vaccination campaign was recently extended to the over 50s. For example, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (56) also received a first vaccination on Friday, with the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Conservative head of government was injected into St Thomas’s Hospital in London, where he himself ended up in intensive care in April after contracting COVID-19.

The country is currently using two vaccines: that from Pfizer / BioNTech and that from AstraZeneca / Oxford. A third vaccine, from Moderna, has been approved and should become available in the coming weeks. The government hopes that all adults will have received a first dose of vaccine by the end of July.

The United Kingdom is one of the most affected countries in Europe: more than 126,000 people died from the effects of the corona virus.

# Belga context ## Related article(s) [Coronavirus – Meer dan 25 miljoen Britten …]

## Related link(s) [Coronavirus – Tweet minister Hancock]

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(Belgian)

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