DETROIT – The eyes of the world are on the United Kingdom as people there are receiving the first doses of a new coronavirus vaccine starting Tuesday.
Carefully carried inside box after box, unsealed, gently placed in freezers and locked for security, Britain’s ‘first wave’ of coronavirus vaccinations is about to begin.
The UK expects to have 4 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine available for distribution by the end of December.
Fifty hospital hubs across the UK have already received their allocation of the vaccine.
COVID-19 vaccinations are set to begin on Tuesday in England, Wales and Scotland.
The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, enough to vaccinate 20 million people or one-third of its population.
The very first wave of patients to get the vaccine are those age 80 and older who are already in those hospitals.
Next up the hospitals will start bringing in the elderly and nursing home staff as well as vulnerable health workers.
And the program will continue to expand from there with local doctors beginning to administer the vaccine the following week in a limited number of practices.
This week will probably go down as the turning point in the UK’s fight against COVID.
Today questions surfaced about whether the 94-year-old queen will be among those to get vaccinated.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on private medical decisions.
But royal experts say, if Queen Elizabeth does get the vaccine, she’ll wait in line, just like everybody else.
The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in Michigan has risen to 404,386 as of Monday, including 9,947 deaths, state officials report.
Monday’s update includes both Sunday and Monday data, totaling 9,350 new cases and an additional 93 deaths over the last two days.
New COVID-19 cases are slowing but deaths continue to rise in Michigan. Testing has remained steady, with more than 46,000 diagnostic tests reported per day, but the positive rate has increased to more than 14% over the last week. Hospitalizations have increased steadily for the last five weeks, including upticks in critical care and ventilator use.