If Margaret Keenan was Patient 1A, was William Shakespeare “Patient 2B or not 2B?”

Humour and hope ruled high as a 90-year-old grandmother in Britain became the world’s first person to receive a fully tested Covid vaccine shot on a “great day for medical science and the future” that was celebrated as “V-day”.

Keenan, who turns 91 in a week, was the first to receive the shot — at a hospital in Coventry, central England — marking the launch of a global drive that poses one of the biggest logistical challenges in peacetime history.

At 6.31am on Tuesday, Keenan, a former jewellery shop assistant, rolled up the sleeve of her “Merry Christmas” T-shirt to receive the first shot, and her image quickly became an emblem of the remarkable race to produce a vaccine and the global effort to end a pandemic that has killed 1.5 million people worldwide.

“I feel so privileged to be the first person vaccinated against Covid-19. It’s the best early birthday presentI could wish for because it meansI can finally look forward to spending time with my family andfriends in the new year after being on my own for most of the year,”said Keenan, known as Maggie.

Health workers started inoculating the most vulnerable with the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, with the country a test case for the world as it contends with distributing a compound that must be stored at minus 70°C.

The second person to receive the shot was William Shakespeare from Warwickshire in England. Besides Keenan, none attracted as much attention as the 81-year-old, who was second in line for a shot in Coventry and who, the National Health Service confirmed, really is named William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare had the injection at University Hospital Coventry, 20 miles from Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of his namesake, England’s greatest dramatist and poet.

Shakespeare’s shot inspired Twitter users, who joked about “The Taming of the Flu”, “The Two Gentlemen of Corona”.

More literary shots followed.

“Actually I heard the second person to get the vaccine was Christopher Marlowe but William Shakespeare took all the credit,” tweeted Tiernan Douieb, alluding to the theory that some of Shakespeare’s plays were written by his contemporaries.

Some settled for the simple but evocative “All’s well that ends well”.

The pun had its moment, too. “I’m surprised they let William Shakespeare have the vaccine. I thought he was Bard,” deadpanned one person.

All of which was getting a bit too much for Amanda @Pandamoanimum who tweeted: “People are making a big thing about the second man to receive the Covid-19 vaccine being called William Shakespeare, but I think it’s much ado about nothing.”

Hari Shukla, 87, a race relations campaigner, and his wife Ranjan, 83, became the first Indian-origin couple in the world to get the vaccine. They were given the shots at a hospital in Newcastle.

“I’m so pleased we are hopefully coming towards the end of this pandemic and I am delighted to be doing my bit by having the vaccine, I feel it is my duty to do so and do whatever I can to help,” said Shukla, who was born in Kenya and whose father hailed from Mumbai.

“Today is a great day for medical science, and the future,” Chris Whitty, Britain’s chief medical officer, said on Tuesday.

Britain, the worst-hit in Europe with over 61,000 deaths, is the first western nation to begin mass vaccinations and the first globally to roll out the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

Those receiving the first dose of the two-dose regimen will have to wait three weeks for their second shot, and there is no evidence that immunisation will reduce transmission of the virus.

“It will gradually make a huge, huge difference. But I stress gradually, because we’re not there yet. We haven’t defeated this virus yet,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.

“It is amazing to see the vaccine, but we can’t afford to relax now,” Johnson said on Tuesday morning as he visited a London hospital. Trying to calm a recipient’s nerves about needles, he suggested: “I always try to think of something else — recite some poetry.”

Keenan, the first vaccine recipient, showed no such nerves. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said on Twitter that watching Keenan receive the shot gave her “a bit of a lump in the throat”.

“Feels like such a milestone moment after a tough year for everyone,” Sturgeon added.

Administering Keenan’s shot was May Parsons, a nurse who is originally from the Philippines and has worked for the National Health Service (NHS) for 24 years.

“The last few months have been tough for all of us working in the NHS,” she said, “but now it feels like there is light at the end of the tunnel.”