Overview

COVID-19 vaccines must be handled with care, and following the manufacturer’s instructions. This series of articles considers each COVID-19 vaccine in turn, outlining critical information and signposting the Summary of Product Characteristics.

These are:

• Understanding the characteristics of Comirnaty 30 Concentrate for adults and adolescents vaccine
• Understanding the characteristics of Comirnaty Bivalent vaccine
• Understanding the characteristics of Comirnaty 10 Concentrate for children vaccine
• Understanding the characteristics of Spikevax Original vaccine
• Understanding the characteristics of Spikevax Bivalent vaccine

Vaxzevria and Nuvaxovid

As use of Vaxzevria is extremely limited and it will be phased out of the programme by September 2022 SPS resources are no longer provided.

SPS resources have not been prepared for Nuvaxovid because it does not have complex handling requirements and it will be prescribed and administered only in specialist clinics

About the new articles August 2022

When the first vaccines were available under emergency provision (“Regulation 174”) in late 2020 SPS produced a set of detailed Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) and Institutional Readiness documents for each of the vaccines. Over the following months, these documents were updated and expanded to take into account new vaccines and changes to the information about the vaccines.

Now that the vaccines have Conditional Marketing Authorisations, and with the introduction of variations to the original vaccines, we have revised the SPS resources. We have replaced the Institutional Readiness documents and some of the explanatory text within the SOPs and created this linked series of articles to enable users to understand the characteristics of each vaccine. We have also consolidated the original SOPs into resources common to all vaccines, while retaining the vaccine-specific preparation SOPs. See our Managing Covid-19 Vaccines: Guidance and SOPs main article.

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