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Over 100,000 volunteers now registered for COVID-19 vaccine trials
17th August 2020
As the number of people registered to take part in COVID-19 vaccine trials has now topped 100,000, we are encouraging others to follow their lead to help speed up efforts to discover safe and effective vaccines.
The NHS COVID-19 vaccine research registry will help large numbers of people to be recruited into the trials over the coming months, potentially leading to effective vaccines being identified and made available to the UK public against coronavirus earlier. It has been developed as part of the UK Government’s Vaccine Taskforce, in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), NHS Digital, and the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Governments.
To enable large-scale vaccine studies to take place across the UK, the aim is to get as many people as possible signed up by October. The register can be accessed at www.nhs.uk/researchcontact.
Researchers are looking for people from all backgrounds, ages and parts of the UK, including both people with or without existing health conditions, to take part in vaccine studies, to make sure that any vaccines developed will work for everyone. Research has found that certain groups of people are more likely to catch the virus or suffer severe illness as a result, so those who are most likely to benefit from vaccines are particularly invited to sign up. These include over the 65s, frontline workers and those from the black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.
Clinical studies with a large and diverse group of volunteers will help scientists and researchers better understand the effectiveness of each vaccine and will considerably speed up efforts to discover safe and workable vaccines.
Dr Gregor Smith, Interim Chief Medical Officer for Scotland comments:
“We are pleased that already over 12,000 people in Scotland have signed up since the UK NHS COVID-19 vaccine research registry was launched only a few weeks ago. This registry will help researchers more easily identify and get in touch with people who are interested in participating in these important studies. We encourage people who would like to help Scottish medical researchers contribute to COVID-19 vaccine research to consider signing up.”
The service is available to anyone aged 18 or over, living in the UK. To register, people fill in some personal and contact details and answer a series of basic health screening questions on an NHS.UK website form. The service is highly secure, with personal data and permissions held in an NHS system managed by NHS Digital.
There is no obligation to take part in any study and people who sign up can change their mind and remove their contact details from the registry at any time.
To find out more, visit: www.nhs.uk/researchcontact. More information about taking part in research and other opportunities to take part in COVID-19 research can be found at www.bepartofresearch.uk.
