Mr Johnson revealed 500,000 people in the UK had received their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55400049



This time next week it'll be a million ..... !

The company behind the Covid-19 vaccine being given to people in the UK says it is "highly likely" the vaccine will protect people against the new variant of the virus. But if necessary, the vaccine could be re-engineered in a matter of weeks, BioNTech's boss said.

Called VOC-202012/01, the variant contains 23 mutations - an unusually large number all at once - which can cause it to behave differently, although it's unclear yet exactly how.

At a news conference in Germany, Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, said "scientifically, it is highly likely that [the] immune response by this vaccine also can deal with the new virus variant". And he added that the company had the technology to refine its vaccine very quickly if it needed to.

He confirmed that he didn't know "at the moment" if their vaccine was able to provide protection against this new variant.