Tackling vaccination concerns

The first thing I wanted to tell you in this editorial was that I have had my first vaccine! Like many million others I was delighted to get the call and I feel relief and privilege to have received my first Oxford-Astra Zeneca dose. I've had a few side effects, but too few to mention, and they are what I would expect post any vaccination. My biggest side effect was the fact I felt immediately safer than before, almost to the point of elation! We are making progress, we are working through this, and we will hopefully soon be able to follow the Government roadmap of easing restrictions due to the vaccination programme rollout.

In the UK more than 24 million people have had the first dose of the vaccine (The Visual and Data Journalism Team, 2021) with high numbers now progressing to the second dose. But as with many vaccination programmes there have been a few bumps in the road and with the news that a number of European countries have suspended the use of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccination due to blood clot issues, it reminds me that we need to take media reporting and factual evidence regarding drug and vaccine safety as very separate information sources. I know that since this news broke, a colleague of mine has seen a dramatic increase in DNA (did not attend) in her vaccination clinic compared to the week prior. The European Medicines agency, who regulates European medicines approvals, is convinced that the benefits of the vaccination far outweigh the risks (BBC News, 2021) and that their is no evidence of a causal link between the vaccination and blood clots, and indeed the World Health Organisation has urged that vaccination programmes are not halted. In this same news report, Astra Zeneca states that the UK has reported 15 DVTs and 22 pulmonary embolisms in vaccinated individuals, but is at pains to point out that these figures were ‘much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar across other licensed COVID-19 vaccines’ (Astra Zeneca, 2021). It doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out that if the UK has vaccinated 24 million people and 37 embolic events have been reported that this is a miniscule percentage of the vaccinated population (0.0015% by my calculation).