There is a very real possibility of Britain largely eliminating the fatality risk of the virus by early spring.
You are browsing in private mode. To enjoy all the benefits of our website LOG IN or Create an Account Eleven months after the sequencing of the Covid-19 genome, the first doses of the Pfizer/BioTech vaccine were administered in the UK today. The vaccine has been shown in clinical trials to have a 95 per cent effectiveness in preventing Covid-19 infections. Only 800,000 doses of the vaccine have arrived in the UK so far, enough to inoculate 400,000 people over a 21-day period (two doses must be taken three weeks apart). At first glance, that is a relatively small number. Around 67 million people live in the UK. The first round of Pfizer vaccine will, therefore, only cover 0.6 per cent of the population, or one in 167 people. In reality, the vaccine will have a far greater effect than that. Since the dangers of coronavirus are so age-specific, each dose being administered will cut the UK-wide risk of death many times over. As the graph below shows, vaccinating small portions of the population will have outsized effects: vaccinating the 2 per cent of Britons most at risk could, for instance, cut the risk of Covid-19 deaths by about 40 per cent.
