Hamish in the vaccine spotlight
Former BBC Spotlight journalist Hamish Marshall has no idea whether he has had the coronavirus jab or not... here he tells us why there is confusion
IT IS six months since I presented a report from a colleague on Spotlight about a vaccine trial which was about to start at the NIHR Patient Recruitment Centre based at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. The experts said this was our way out of the Covid nightmare. We were two months away from any vaccines being approved for use, so I signed up.
During three visits to the Nightingale Hospital in Exeter last October and November, I was tested for Covid-19, weighed, checked over and supplied blood samples. Then I was injected twice, three weeks apart. But was it the trial vaccine? I still don’t know.
Half of the 500 people taking part in the trials in Exeter were given the Novavax vaccine – the other half got a syringe full of salt and water.
It is standard medical trials procedure that you don’t know whether you have had whatever is on trial or a placebo. This is to ensure you behave as a normal and to keep the trials as true to life as possible.
I have spent the last five months hoping I had advance protection from a vaccine – but I can’t be sure in which half of the trial I was in.
In the last few days, the findings of the trials have brought good news. 15,000 people in centres across Britain have taken part in the trials.
The jab offers 100% protection against severe disease, 96% efficacy against the original strain of Covid-19 and 86.3% efficacy against the newer variants of Covid-19 which have been confirmed in the UK and South Africa.
The body which authorises vaccines in now considering these results and it is hoped that Novavax will be approved for use in the UK. The Government has ordered 60 million doses. The world needs as many vaccine options as possible.
As someone aged over 50, I am eligible for a vaccine which has been approved – and so far AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna have been given the green light. If I want to take one of those, I would need to come off the trial and be unblinded, and be told whether it was Novavax or salt and water that I got. However, in a bid to see how for long the vaccine will offer protection, the trial team has tried to keep us on board.
We have been invited to be injected twice again. If we got the placebo last autumn, we will get the vaccine, and if we got the vaccine first time around we will get salt and water. I have my first of the two extra jabs this week, so in the next few weeks those of us on the trial will have definitely have had two doses of the vaccine – we just won’t know when.
It has been really rewarding to feel I have done my bit by helping to give the vaccine a trial run. I am proud that so many people came forward to help – there were more applicants than places available.
Over the last two months, I have been volunteering at the RD&E-run vaccine centre at Westpoint. I have been helping some of the more than 50,000 people who have been vaccinated there. We check their appointment details, show them where to park and where to go once inside. By coincidence, I have met two other volunteers have also been on the Novavax vaccine trial.
The relief you can see on many faces has brought my vaccine journey full circle. Getting it means so much to so many people. Hopefully, Novavax will get the green light soon and those of us in Devon who took part in the trials will know we played our own little part in the big fight against the pandemic.