Full Fact: Unlicensed vaccines are not untested (22 September 2020)

Summary

A number of posts on Facebook and Twitter are making a number of unfounded claims about government changes to how vaccines are introduced in the UK. These claims are misleading and can cause fear. Some of these posts imply that unlicensed vaccines are untested, which is not the case.

An “unlicensed” vaccine for COVID-19 or anything else, does not mean it’s not been tested. Any vaccine rolled out to the public, unlicensed or not, still has to go through extensive clinical trials. This would include a COVID-19 vaccine.

Licensing happens after the vaccine has gone through all three phases of pre-launch trials, which usually means the vaccine has already been tested on thousands of adults. Licensing is when experts within the national Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (or the EU regulators, up to the end of the transition period) review the results of the trials. The standards of vaccines generally have to be much higher than those for medication to treat illnesses, as vaccines are usually given to healthy people to prevent disease.The government can already roll-out unlicensed (but not untested) vaccines during a public health emergency, and the government consultation is proposing to clarify the rules around doing this.

Here, Full Fact outlines what the government consultation document proposes doing.

Full Fact is the UK’s independent fact checking charity.