A year of COVID vaccines: how the UK pinned its hopes on the jab – and why those hopes are under threat

By Andrew Lee, Reader in Global Public Health, University of Sheffield

A year ago, Margaret Keenan made history. On December 8 2020, she became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine outside of a clinical trial. Ninety-year-old Keenan described it as the “best early birthday present”. It was a moment of shining hope in what had been a dark year of deaths, lockdowns and disrupted lives.

Before the vaccines, death rates from COVID were very high, especially in older adults, with rates between…

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