PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Helen J Curtis
AU  - Peter Inglesby
AU  - Caroline E Morton
AU  - Brian MacKenna
AU  - Amelia Green
AU  - William J Hulme
AU  - Alex J Walker
AU  - Jessica Morley
AU  - Amir Mehrkar
AU  - Seb Bacon
AU  - George Hickman
AU  - Chris Bates
AU  - Richard Croker
AU  - David Evans
AU  - Tom Ward
AU  - Jonathan Cockburn
AU  - Simon Davy
AU  - Krishnan Bhaskaran
AU  - Anna Schultze
AU  - Christopher T Rentsch
AU  - Elizabeth J Williamson
AU  - Anna Rowan
AU  - Helen McDonald
AU  - Louis Fisher
AU  - Laurie Tomlinson
AU  - Rohini Mathur
AU  - Henry Drysdale
AU  - Rosalind M Eggo
AU  - Kevin Wing
AU  - Angel YS Wong
AU  - Harriet Forbes
AU  - John Parry
AU  - Frank Hester
AU  - Sam Harper
AU  - Shaun O'Hanlon
AU  - Alex Eavis
AU  - Richard Jarvis
AU  - Dima Avramov
AU  - Paul Griffiths
AU  - Aaron Fowles
AU  - Nasreen Parkes
AU  - Ian Douglas
AU  - Stephen JW Evans
AU  - Liam Smeeth
AU  - Ben Goldacre
TI  - Trends and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 vaccine recipients: a federated analysis of 57.9 million patients’ primary care records in situ using OpenSAFELY
AID  - 10.3399/BJGP.2021.0376
DP  - 2021 Sep 20
TA  - British Journal of General Practice
PG  - BJGP.2021.0376
4099  - http://bjgp.org/content/early/2021/09/24/BJGP.2021.0376.short
4100  - http://bjgp.org/content/early/2021/09/24/BJGP.2021.0376.full
AB  - Background: On December 8th 2020 NHS England administered the first COVID-19 vaccination. Aim: Describe trends and variation in vaccine coverage by clinical and demographic groups. Design and Setting: With the approval of NHS England, we conducted a cohort study of 57.9 million patient records in general practice in England, in-situ and within the infrastructure of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) software vendors EMIS and TPP using OpenSAFELY. Method: We describe vaccine coverage across various subgroups of Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) priority cohorts. Results: 20,852,692 patients (36%) received a vaccine between December 8th and March 17th 2021. Of patients aged ≥80 not in a care home (JCVI group 2) 94.7% received a vaccine, but with substantial variation by ethnicity (White 96.2% vaccinated, Black 68.3%) and deprivation (least deprived 96.6%, most deprived 90.7%). Patients with pre-existing medical conditions were more likely to be vaccinated with two exceptions: severe mental illness (89.5% vaccinated) and learning disability (91.4%). 275,205 vaccine recipients were identified as care home residents (priority group 1; 91.2% coverage). 1,257,914 (6.0%) recipients have had a second dose. Detailed characteristics of all cohorts are reported. Conclusion: The NHS in England has rapidly delivered mass vaccination. We deployed a data monitoring framework using publicly auditable methods and a secure, in-situ processing model, using linked but pseudonymised patient-level NHS data on 57.9 million patients. Targeted activity may be needed to address lower vaccination coverage observed among certain key groups.