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Instant view: Britain accepts the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, which will be released next week.

(Reuters) - On Wednesday, Britain became the first country in the world to approve the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and said it would be launched early next week.

IMMUNOLOGY PROFESSOR AT IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON, DANNY ALTMANN:

Exciting news continues to arrive, but it's very momentous. Nobody knew how the war would pan out to find productive vaccines. Now, less than 11 months after the first virus sequence characterization, we have obtained our first emergency approval for the use of a vaccine that is genuinely safe. Heroic indeed. I don't think we're supposed to get too hung up on the 'race' as the 1st approval. We will likely see a variety of licenses issued over the next few weeks, and we need them all to get out of this mess quickly.

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