The MHRA Papers - Part 15 - Summing up

ON HIS MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE - FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

This post concludes our review of the meeting minutes of the MHRA’s ​​Commission On Human Medicines (CHM) COVID-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group (EWG), which took place until 15 February 2021.

We focused on the activity leading up to conditional market authorisation (CMA), which occurred in the UK at the end of 2020 and on the first day of the new year, 2021. 

The essential points in our view are summarised below.

The minutes and the proceedings were secret. Many participants cannot be identified as their names are redacted. The proceedings’ notes, presentations and recordings are secret. The minutes have been available since December 2024, thanks to a FOI request.

The minutes are heavily formatted, and we could not understand whether a genuine discussion occurred. 

However, some discussions must have happened as the EWG mentioned 36 questions they wanted the manufacturers to answer. We do not know what the questions were nor whether they were responded to, but we have some su…