The vaccine was first approved for use in the United Kingdom vaccination programme on December 30, 2020, and the first vaccination outside of a trial was administered on January 4, 2021. The vaccine has now been approved by numerous medicine agencies around the world, including the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, as well as the World Health Organization (WHO), which has approved it for an Emergency Use Listing. More than 2 billion doses of the vaccine have been distributed to more than 170 countries as of November 2021.