Deputy Chief Operating Officer urges Londoners to join the vaccine research registry
CRN South London’s Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Dawn Beaumont-Jewell, is urging more people in the capital to sign up to the NHS COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry.
The NHS COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry will help people across the UK sign up for information on the vaccine trials. This online service will also help large numbers of people be recruited into the trials, potentially leading to an effective vaccine being identified and made available sooner to the public against coronavirus.
More than 32,000 people have signed up to the vaccine research registry in London so far, which works out to 10.6% of the total number of volunteers. Dawn said:
“By signing up to the NHS COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry, you could help researchers find a vaccine for this virus that protects us all more quickly - which in turn could help the NHS and save many lives.
“Vaccines are one of the safest and most effective ways of keeping people healthy, and they have the potential to help us mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 and bring this pandemic to an end. I’d encourage as many people as possible to play their part in this national effort by signing up to the vaccine research registry.”
The service is available to anyone aged 18 or over, living in the UK. To register, people fill in some personal and contact details, and answer a series of basic health screening questions on an NHS.UK website form. The registry is highly secure, with personal details and permissions held in a NHS system managed by NHS Digital, the national organisation responsible for IT in the health and social care system.
People registering their details through the service are not signing up to take part in a specific trial or study. Instead, researchers working on vaccine studies supported by the NIHR will be able to search for volunteers who have signed up to the service.
When a suitable volunteer has been identified, the researchers will send an email or text to anyone who matches the criteria for their study. This communication will provide more information about the study - and offer the individual the opportunity to contact the research team and find out more, or to express an interest in taking part.
There is no obligation to take part in any study and people who sign up can change their mind and remove their contact details from the registry at any time.
You can find out more about the service on the NHS COVID-19 Vaccine Research Registry. More information about taking part in research and other opportunities to take part in COVID-19 research is available on the NIHR’s Be Part of Research website.
