“It’s V-Day. Thank you to everyone who’s made this possible, from MHRAgovuk clinicians, NHS admin staff, doctors, nurses, everyone who volunteered in the trials & those getting the jab today,” tweeted Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care.

In November 2020, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, Moderna and the University of Oxford, in collaboration with AstraZeneca, announced positive results from interim analyses of their Phase III vaccine trials.

On 2 December, temporary regulatory approval was granted for the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine by the UK medicines regulator MHRA led by June Raine, which is also under evaluation for emergency use authorization (EUA) status by the US FDA, and in several other countries.