Shakespearean slip: Argentine news anchor mixes up Bard with UK's first COVID vaccine recipient

Representative image (Source: Reuters)

An Argentine news presenter committed a faux pas while reporting the death of William 'Bill' Shakespeare, the 81-year-old UK national who was the country's first man to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

The anchor mixed him up with William 'Bard' Shakespeare, the legendary English writer and poet who died in 1616.

The comedy of errors, which drew humorous response online, was committed by Canal 26 presenter Noelia Novillo. One Twitter user, in a sarcastic reaction to her report, said "the virus dates back to over four centuries and we are blaming China".

Novillo, while presenting the erroneous report in Argentine language, described the deceased as "one of the most important writers in the English language - for me the master", BBC News reported.

"We've got news that has stunned all of us given the greatness of this man. We're talking about William Shakespeare and his death. We'll let you know how and why it happened," the channel further quoted her as saying.

Gracias por tanto, internet. pic.twitter.com/O4RpS1t1mH

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A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

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There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

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Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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— Alejo Schapire (@aschapire) May 28, 2021

Also Read | World's first man to get COVID-19 vaccine dies of unrelated illness in UK

The 81-year-old Shakespeare, who died on May 20, had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 8 last year.

Bill, as he was fondly known, passed away after a period of illness at the same hospital where he famously received his vaccine, the British media had reported. His cause of illness was not related to COVID-19, the reports clarified.