Professionalism and Covid-19 vaccines

The UK has become the first country in the world, with the exception of Russia, to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination. This is hugely significant for the UK and globally. The UK regulatory authority, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), gave approval. The MHRA itself was advised by the Commission on Human Medicines (CHM), the government’s independent expert scientific advisory body. A team of MHRA scientists and clinicians carried out a rigorous, scientific and detailed review of all the available data, starting in October 2020.

Our expectation of the chiropractic profession is that registrants will work to ensure that their patients are referred and signposted to trusted sources of information and recognise the dangers of misinformation. Patient safety and public trust in immunisation are vital and we emphasise that while immunisation is an important area of public health it is outside the scope of chiropractic competence.    

We further expect all registrants to check the validity of information they pass on or comment on either online or offline and to refrain from engaging with or making unsubstantiated claims that are not supported by concrete scientific evidence or credible sources.