Vaccine safety webinar with HDRUK

13 Dec 2021

I was an invited speaker to the HDRUK COVID-19 vaccine safety research webinar that took place on 11th November, 2021. You can see a video of my talk below. In it, I briefly outline the main findings from studies of vaccine safety that I worked on using the EAVE II platform, which consists of clinical and demographic information for the entire population of Scotland.

Our main findings were that vaccination with Oxford-AstraZeneca was associated with an elevated risk of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (a type of blood clot in the brain that can potentially be fatal), and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (low platelet count in blood which can lead to bleeding - sometimes in the brain, which can be very serious).

I also give a quick outline of the main costs and benefits of vaccination, and suggest that given it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic, we may have to move away from mass-vaccination towards a strategy that is much smaller in scope and targeted at the elderly and the vulnerable.