Skip to content

Shakespeare gets Covid vaccine: All's well that ends well

Reuters William Shakespeare receives his Covid-19 vaccineReuters
Is this a needle which I see before me? William Shakespeare receiving his first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine

Margaret Keenan has made history by becoming the first person in the world to get a Covid-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial, but if there's one name you'll associate with this day, it may not be hers.

Enter, pursued by puns, William Shakespeare.

Not the writer, poet and playwright, but his 81-year-old namesake. This Mr Shakespeare was the second person to be given a jab - and, guess what, he also comes from Warwickshire.

"Much ado about nothing?" It doesn't matter - "all's well that ends well".

"Is this a needle which I see before me?" the present-day Shakespeare could have asked, but his reaction was a little bit less, well, dramatic: he said he was "pleased" to be given the jab, and staff at University Hospital in Coventry had been "wonderful".

So, if Ms Keenan was patient 1A, was Mr Shakespeare "Patient 2B or not 2B"?

Theirs were the first of 800,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that will be dispensed in the coming weeks in the UK.

The vaccine is given as two injections, 21 days apart, with the second dose being a booster. Immunity begins to kick in after the first dose but reaches its full effect seven days after the second dose.

"Two doses, both alike in quantity," if we're allowed another pun - but here are some others on the day "the taming of the flu" began.

Allow Twitter content?

This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read  and  before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.

Allow Twitter content?

This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read  and  before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.

Allow Twitter content?

This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read  and  before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.

Allow Twitter content?

This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read  and  before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.

Allow Twitter content?

This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read  and  before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.

Allow Twitter content?

This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read  and  before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’.