The UKHSA has admitted for the first time that it is undertaking internal analysis “every week or two” to monitor the current real-world performance of the vaccines but not publishing the results.
In an email seen by the Daily Sceptic, Dr Mary Ramsay, Head of Immunisation at the UKHSA, admits that her agency is continuing to undertake regular analysis of vaccine effectiveness but, despite publishing a weekly Vaccine Surveillance report, is not publishing the estimates.
The Vaccine Surveillance reports have recently been criticised by the U.K Statistics Authority and others for including data which shows infection rates in the vaccinated running at more than double the rate in the unvaccinated. Critics have argued this gives a misleading impression that the vaccines are ineffective or worse. They say it is really a result of problems with the population estimates and systemic differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
The UKHSA has responded by altering the presentation of its data to draw attention to these limitations and make clear that, in its view, the data should not be used to estimate vaccine effectiveness.
However, it has not published an update of its own estimates of vaccine effectiveness using data more recent than May 2021. This means it has not updated its estimates with data from the summer and autumn, a period when its raw data shows infections in the vaccinated outpacing those in the unvaccinated.
In a recent post I encouraged readers to contact Dr Ramsay to ask her to publish an update of her agency’s study of vaccine effectiveness. In a reply to one reader, seen by the Daily Secptic, Dr Ramsay made the stunning admission:
We continue to undertake TNCC analysis every week or two and will update this when things change or when we want to highlight a new analysis, for example for a new variant or the booster effect.
TNCC stands for test-negative case control, and it is one of the approaches UKHSA uses for estimating vaccine effectiveness, which it deems to eliminate key biases in the data, especially from different testing behaviour.
Dr Ramsay has thus admitted that they are continuously monitoring real-world vaccine effectiveness using their worrying data. Why then are they not routinely publishing the results? What have they got to hide?
Dr Ramsay says they will publish an update when “things change” or when they want to highlight a new variant or the impact of boosters. In the meantime, they are publishing the raw data showing infections in the vaccinated eclipsing those in the unvaccinated, but telling people the data is biased and no conclusions can be drawn about the vaccines. This is an absurd state of affairs and needs to be challenged.
As before, if readers want politely to suggest that UKHSA actually publishes its estimates of vaccine effectiveness based on the latest real-world data, you can email Dr Mary Ramsay here (or find her on Twitter here).
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.