COVID-19 and vaccine safety

I initially scribbled this as a facebook post, but adding it as a blog as well to allow for easier sharing.

So, vaccine safety

The TLDR version is that the safety record of both Pfizer and the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines is excellent. No vaccine-caused deaths and reported side effects are overwhelmingly a sore arm/headache for a day etc. They’re brilliant.

In the UK, you can report any possible side effects of a vaccine to the regulators, the MHRA. And you should, do report anything at all, even if it is a sore arm when you wake up the next morning that you’re not really bothered about. It’s called the Yellow Card reporting system.

The MHRA have reviewed initial safety data, and found ‘3 yellow cards’ per 1000 doses administered. That’s basically the same as any other vaccine in the schedule. We now have millions of doses in the UK alone to consider the data and safety profile, with over 100 million doses given worldwide (there’s now more vaccine doses handed out than confirmed COVID-19 cases!). So even the ‘1 in a million’ rare events are now being picked up.

If you have any concerns at all about the vaccine then a chat with the GP should be your port of call, but in particular if you have a history of allergic reaction. There’s been a small number of what are called ‘severe adverse events’, involving a severe reaction to the vaccine. Some have been hospitalized, all were discharged a short while later and no one has died due to being given the vaccine. These more serious reactions have occurred in 0.0016% of doses.

Safety data from around the world that is emerging shows similar reassurance. There’s all the clinical trials that show the vaccines have good safety profiles, plus ‘real-world’ data like this MHRA review. See here and here for a bit more on this topic.

Anti-vaccine activists, being the disreputable shameless vomit blots on humanity that they are, fabricate claims about the vaccine safety. For example, they claim a nurse in the USA died from her vaccine dose. This nurse continues to claim she’s just fine actually, but for some reason, this isn’t proof enough for the anti-vax lot. All very tedious, but see here for one of the several fact-checking articles on this story)

Anyway, back to level ground. If you’re pregnant, yes UK guidance is that you can be offered the vaccine, but head to your GP/healthcare worker for a chat first up. Trials starting on vaccine use in children in the UK soon (Starting with older children first). But a roll-out into child populations will be at least a few months away.

To conclude, we now have seen millions of doses in the UK, and >100 million around the world. Safety record of these vaccines is great. We can all be reassured that the research was conducted thoroughly and that the real-world data backs that up.