Coronavirus: Vaccination

Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 29 April 2026.

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Photo of Esther McVey Esther McVey Conservative, Tatton

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish full citations for the peer-reviewed population-level studies from the UK, France, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden mentioned by the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer in the quote that appeared on GB News online, dated 27 March 2026.

Photo of Zubir Ahmed Zubir Ahmed The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) considers a wide range of safety data as part of post-authorisation safety monitoring. One source of this data is academic literature. References for the studies mentioned by the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer in the article in question, namely for France and for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, are available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12679329/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39935358/

Whilst there have been no United Kingdom based, population wide studies performed that investigate COVID-19 vaccines and cancer incidence rates specifically, the MHRA’s Chief Safety Officer was referencing a population-based study reviewing COVID-19 vaccine uptake in individuals with haematological malignancy, as well as a population-based study reviewing COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in patients with cancer. These studies are accessible, respectively, via the following links:

https://www.ejcancer.com/article/S0959-8049(23)00059-X/fulltext

https://europepmc.org/article/MED/35617989

Neither of these studies identified any adverse safety signals, and both suggest vaccination is in the interest of individuals with cancer.

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