In the coming week, when the UK begins its Coronavirus vaccination programme, becoming the first Western country to allow mass inoculations against the infectious disease that killed nearly 1.49 million people within a year, the world will be watching. Britain's decision to start emergency authorisation of the Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE's shot—said to have 95 per cent efficacy—has, however, drawn flak from some members within the scientific community. Leading this pack is a ex-Pfizer veteran, Dr Mike Yeadon, who left the pharmaceutical giant in 2011 as Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy and Respiratory.

On December 1, a day before the UK approved the vaccine, Dr Yeadon along with Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, former head of the public health department, Germany, filed an application with the European Medicine Agency responsible for EU-wide drug approval, demanding the immediate suspension of all SARS CoV-2 vaccine studies. With 30 years of experience behind him, Dr Yeadon, who in an earlier piece for lockdownsceptics.org, declared that the pandemic in the UK was "effectively over"—a claim that health fact-checker, Health Feedback, termed "inaccurate"—has raised concerns about the "potentially fatal reactions" to contents in the vaccines, and long-term side effects, on which currently no studies are available.