At the moment, there doesn't seem to be much active publicity for this, either by the Government, the NHS or the people doing the vaccinations. It's just a shame they aren't giving the same amount of publicity to reporting ADRs as they are to getting people to have the vaccine, especially as the vaccines are used under a Temporary Authorisation. I'm hoping to change this.

Have you had the Covid vaccine? Are you thinking of having it?

If you're thinking of having it, you most definitely need to know about it.

If you've had it, your doctor, or the medical staff at the vaccination centre should have told you about it prior to being vaccinated, or on the day of vaccination.

So, What is the Yellow Card scheme?

A description from the Yellow Card website:

The Yellow Card scheme run by the MHRA and 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. The scheme relies on voluntary reporting of suspected side effects or medical device incidents to be reported by health professionals and the public, including patients, carers and parents. Reporting helps others.

For the covid vaccination, a separate website was set up:
https://coronavirus-yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/

This is specifically for reporting Adverse Reactions for the Covid 19 vaccines.

Obviously, with vaccines that are as new as the Covid 19 ones, which was issued a Temporary Authorisation, all adverse reactions need to be reported. It does seem like the Yellow Card scheme isn't being publicised as well as it needs to be.

The Government produces 5 PDF documents every week (normally on a Thursday, but occasionally on a Friday) on its website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions

The first is a summary report which is also available as HTML. This gives you a roundup of the following reports. Notice the way they are using the first few paragraphs as a way of promoting the vaccines.

The other four PDFs are the analysis prints for the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and also Brand Unspecified, where the person reporting was unaware of the vaccine brand that was given.
It gives you the vaccine name, list of disorders, and total and fatal reactions at the end of the disorder. At the end of the report are the Total Reactions, Total Reports and Total Fatal Outcomes.

These are the reported reactions from the time the vaccine was introduced.

The reason why the Total Reactions and Total Reports figures are different is because one report can, and usually does, contain several reactions.

I've set up a separate page on this website with relevant information:
https://yellowcard.report/yellow-card.shtml

I've uploaded all previous Analysis Reports and Summary PDFs to a google drive which is linked from that page.

So have a good look at the reports..and if you weren't told about the Yellow Card scheme before you were vaccinated, ask yourself why...and more importantly ask your surgery, vaccination staff etc WHY you weren't told.