As UK began one of the largest vaccination drives, an Indian-origin couple in their 80s became one of the first few people to receive the recently approved Coronavirus vaccine. Hari Shukla, an 87-year-old doctor and his 83-year-old wife, Ranjan Shukla, from the north east of England became the first Indian-origin couple in the world to get the Covid shot after they were vaccinated at a hospital in Newcastle.

Before the couple, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan and 81-year-old William Shakespeare became the first two people to receive the first shots in one of Britain’s largest immunization programs, an unprecedented global effort to try to end a pandemic that has killed millions of people already. Hari Shukla, a race relations campaigner, based in England’s Tyne and Wear County, was contacted by the National Health Service (NHS) based on the criteria set for the world’s first vaccine to receive regulatory approvals in the UK in December.

“Hari Shukla and his wife Ranjan have become the first two patients at Newcastle Hospitals - and two of the first people in the world - to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said.