The United Kingdom will begin administering its coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday.
There are 800,000 doses in the first batch of vaccines the U.K. has received from Pfizer and BioNTech. Since it is a two-dose vaccine, 400,000 people will be vaccinated. In all, the U.K. has ordered 40 million doses from Pfizer.
Nursing home residents, those aged 80 and older, and healthcare workers will be the first to receive the vaccine.
On Dec. 2, the U.K. became the first Western country to approve a coronavirus vaccine for distribution.
Simon Stevens, the head of Britain’s National Health Service, said it would be a “decisive turning point in the battle against coronavirus.”
Initially, 50 hospitals will serve as distribution hubs for the vaccine. As the U.K. receives more doses, temporary clinics in sports stadiums, libraries, and parking lots will be used to administer the vaccine.
Simon said that the vaccination effort would continue “at least until next spring.”
The vaccine has to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius, or minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, which can make splitting apart the boxes of vaccine vials difficult.
“There’s something like five doses to each vial, and each box is 975 doses,” Sarah Boseley, health editor for the Guardian, told NPR. “Because they’re kept in this deep-frozen state, they then have to be very, very carefully split up. And that is the bit, actually, that hasn’t yet been properly figured out.”
