Emergency contact card dated 12.3.2020 given to Dr Elisa Granato as the very first volunteer vaccinated in the clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and later in partnership with AstraZeneca.

‘I had always been interested in how clinical trials worked. I never felt like I was taking a risk. During the trial, I received lots of messages, most very positive but also some negative – falsely claiming the rial was a hoax. Bu my friends and family were happy everything was going well, both for me and for the thousands of others who participated in trials all over the country, and the world.’

On 23 April 2020, microbiologist Elisa Granato became the first person on to be injected with a COVID-19 vaccine, as part of the Oxford Vaccine Group clinical trials – the first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine. Like all volunteers, Elisa was also given the trial participation card which she kept in her wallet for the duration of the trial. Such cards are an important part of many clinical trials, used to indicate to healthcare professionals of the volunteers’ status, in case they become unwell or are in an accident. For the first part of the trial, 10 volunteers including Elisa received two doses of the trial vaccine four weeks apart. An additional 1000 people aged 18-55, were also recruited, with half receiving the vaccine and the other half, known as the control group), received a widely available meningitis vaccine.

The COVID-19 vaccine created by the Oxford Vaccine Group in collaboration with the biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca was developed, tested and approved in less than a year but was built on years of vaccine research. The active element in the vaccine is made from an adenovirus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees, which was modified so that it cannot cause an infection. It is used to deliver the genetic code for the coronavirus spike protein to prime the recipient's body for an infection of COVID-19. The vaccine was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on 30th December 2020 with the first doses given in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2021. Two billion doses have been distributed to at least 170 countries.