The royals were injected by a royal GP at Windsor Castle
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip received Covid-19 vaccines on Saturday, Buckingham Palace said, as the country has passed three million cases since the outbreak began last year.
A source told the Home Media Association news agency that the 94-year-old queen and Philip, 99, were admitted by a royal home doctor at Windsor Castle.
“The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh received Covid-19 vaccines today,” said a spokesman at Buckingham Palace, in a rare public comment on the monarch’s long-standing private health issues.
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The queen is understood to have decided that the information should be made public to prevent error and profiteering.
No further details about the vaccines have been released.
The queen and Philip have spent much of the pandemic alone in Windsor due to advanced age, and this year they canceled their traditional family Christmas on the Sandringham estate in the east of England.
To date more than 1.5 million people in Britain have received a virus injection, with the largest vaccination program in history going up with priority given to the elderly, carers and health workers.
The country, which has so far begun administering two types of approved vaccines, is racing to protect as many people as possible as a coronavirus variable pushes diseases and deaths to unprecedented levels never.
Britain on Saturday passed the hard milestone of three million cases during the pandemic, after the government announced a further 59,937 new cases.
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It also recorded a further 1,035 deaths from the virus, bringing the death toll to 80,868, one of the highest in Europe along with Italy.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson placed his third home stay order earlier in the week as things continue to spin since Christmas.
Medical leaders are racing to boost treatment capacity as hospitals were in danger of being overcrowded, while the government stepped up their massive inoculation campaign.
They are banking when the Pfizer / BioNTech and Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccines are released to stop the spread of the virus.
UK regulators also this week approved the US company’s Moderna Covid vaccine – the third to be authorized for nationwide use.
The government aims to contain 15 million of the most vulnerable groups, including NHS frontline workers, by mid-February, and has deployed the armed forces to help spread out.
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