Covid in Scotland: Volunteers wanted for Dundee vaccines study

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Covid vaccineImage source, Reuters

Dundee University is seeking thousands of volunteers for a study assessing the safety and effectiveness of Covid vaccines as they are rolled out.

The university's Memo Research medicines monitoring unit has launched the 'Vac4Covid' survey to help ensure vaccines work as they should.

The unit said it would work closely with vaccine regulators to inform them of its findings.

The survey , externalis initially open to anyone in the UK over 18-years-old.

It is hoped the study will extend to other countries soon.

Two vaccines - developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca - are currently being used in the UK.

A third, from Moderna, has been approved.

As of Wednesday, a total of 649,262 people in Scotland had received their first dose of the vaccine.

'New conditions'

The unit said that thousands of volunteers were needed to detect if there are any unexpected, rare conditions linked to the vaccinations.

Participants will provide information about their health before and after vaccination.

Those who sign up will be contacted at regular intervals before and after vaccination to check on their health.

Project leader Prof Tom MacDonald said: "New medical conditions, like heart problems, and neurological diagnoses, occur all the time, whether people are vaccinated or not.

"The difficulty for medicines regulators is to know how many new conditions are related to vaccination and how many would have happened anyway."

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