BY ROY C. MABASA
Filipino nurse May Parsons, the first health worker to deliver the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine to a 90-year-old British woman, is earning praises for her role in the historic turn of events in the fight against the pandemic.
“Great to see Matron May Parsons, originally from the Philippines, deliver the world’s first vaccine shot. Our NHS (National Health Service) is proud to have such dedicated health worker,” Nigel Adams, Minister of State for Asia at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, said in a tweet on Tuesday.
In another tweet, British Ambassador to the Philippines Daniel Pruce described as a “fantastic moment” the historic first anti-COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) vaccine injected by Parsons to Margaret Keenan, a grandmother of four, during the pilot launch in the United Kingdom.
“A fantastic moment! And great to see that the vaccine is administered by Nurse May Parsons from the Philippines – one of the many thousands of Filipino healthcare workers making such an enormous contribution to the NHS (National Health Service),” Pruce said.
In a photo released by the British news platform Sky News, Parsons was shown injecting Keenan with Pfizer/BioNTech-made vaccine, the first to be given to someone outside a clinical trial.
Parsons told the British media it was a “huge honor” to be the first in the country to deliver the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to a patient.
“The last few months have been tough for all of us working in the NHS, but now it feels like there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Parsons was quoted as telling Sky News.
It was learned that Parsons has been working in the NHS sector for the last 24 years and connected at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire since 2003.
Keenan, a grandmother of four, was administered with the vaccine at the city’s University Hospital at 6:31 a.m. Last month, American drug maker Pfizer, together with its German partner BioNTech SE, released initial data on its vaccine that showed it to have an efficacy of more than 90 percent.
It was followed by the British government’s authorization last week for the Pfizer vaccine’s emergency use, with older people getting the first shots of the injection.
