Pandemic/Statistics/Yellow Card Scheme
Yellow Card Scheme (UK)
The Yellow Card scheme is the UK system for collecting and monitoring information on safety concerns such as suspected side effects or adverse incidents involving medicines and medical devices.
All medicines can cause side effects (commonly referred to as adverse drug reactions or ADRs by healthcare professionals).
Side effects reported on Yellow Cards are evaluated, together with additional sources of information such as clinical trial data, medical literature or data from international medicines regulators, to identify previously unknown safety issues. These reports are assessed by a team of medicine safety experts made up of doctors, pharmacists and scientists who study the benefits and risks of medicines. If a new side effect is identified, the safety profile of the medicine in question is carefully looked at, as well as the side effects of other medicines used to treat the same condition. The MHRA assesses the balance of risks and benefits of all medicines at the time of initial licensing and throughout their use in clinical practice. Where appropriate, the MHRA seeks advice from the independent Commission on Human Medicines (CHM). The MHRA takes action, whenever necessary, to ensure that medicines are used in a way that minimises risk, while maximising patient benefit.
Source: Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Yellow Card Scheme
Contents
About The Yellow Card
The home page for the Yellow Card Scheme at https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/the-yellow-card-scheme/ is designed to explain what the scheme is; describes what a side effect or adverse drug reaction is; and how to report an adverse event following immunisation; - but no way of getting information out of the system.
That problem must have been the subject of a Freedom of Information (FOI) Request, because the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) created a webpage on 24 March 2021 which begins:-
Freedom of Information request on Yellow Card data on all COVID-19 related vaccines (FOI 21-120)
Published 24 March 2021
Thank you for your email.
We confirm we have published the data and this is available to view at the following link of our website page below
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions
Please note this information will be published weekly.
Source: Freedom of Information responses from the MHRA - week commencing 8 February 2021
Consistent with the above commitment, the MHRA now publishes weekly reports covering adverse reactions to approved COVID-19 vaccines. This set of reports includes a weekly summary and then a 'print' for each COVID-19 vaccine. The 'print' is simply a report printed from the Yellow Card database, filtered by vaccine name or brand, and each printout in .pdf format runs to tens of pages.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been administered for longer than the alternatives, Pfizer or Moderna, and has the longest printout (121 pages in July 2021!). This is because each medical condition reported is itemised and listed within a relevant group of adverse reactions. The reports are so detailed that it is difficult to see the 'big picture'.
To view these weekly reports yourself, open this page in a web browser and follow the on-page links:-
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions
COVID-19 VACCINES YELLOW CARD ANALYSIS
To solve the problem of too much itemised data and insufficient clear information, a group called the UK Freedom Project has been processing the MHRA Yellow Card data to produce a meaningful summary and comparisons.
To access the vaccine adverse event data in this easy-to-understand format, visit their Home Page at https://ukfreedomproject.org[1]
From the Menu, select Research and then select COVID-19 VACCINES YELLOW CARD ANALYSIS
Notes
- ↑ URLs quoted were correct in July 2021. The website may take longer than expected to load. Be patient! Also, if you manually search for the UKFreedomProject or type the URL yourself it is very easy to be mistaken and not find it. Although well-intentioned, the name for this group is easily confused with groups focussed on freedom from slavery, or freedom from domestic abuse.
