BREAKING NEWS: Half of Brits in UK Have Received First Vaccine

HALF of those living in the UK have now received their first vaccine, it has emerged.

Figures show that half of people in the UK have received their first vaccine.

According to the Sun newspaper, more than 33.4 million people have had their first vaccine in the UK.

The UK population is estimated to be 66,796,807, so the latest figures show that more than half the population have now had a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

In total, 11.1 million people have also received their second dose, a fifth of the UK.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “I want to thank everyone involved in the vaccine rollout which has already saved many thousands of lives.”

The news comes after the UK is no longer in a pandemic after the vaccine rollout has cut infections by 90 per cent, according to an expert.

Sarah Walker, a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford, said Britain had “moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.”

She added: “Without vaccines, I don’t think getting close to zero is really feasible in the situation now in the UK where we’re effectively endemic, we’ve moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.”

Professor Walker said falling infections were due to lockdown and vaccines. She said: “Long-term lockdown isn’t a viable solution so vaccines are clearly going to be the only way that we are going to have a chance to control this,” she said.

Data from a study of the impact of the vaccine shows it reduces infection and helps cut transmission.

It found that one dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines leads to a two-thirds drop in cases and is 74 percent effective against symptomatic infection.

The study also found that after two doses of Pfizer there was a 70 percent reduction in all cases and a 90 percent drop in symptomatic cases.

So far 33.1 million people living in the UK have had a first dose of the vaccine, with more than 10.7 million having had a second.

It was also revealed that the hospitalisation risk in elderly people was reduced by as much as 98 percent after a vaccine.