Auckland University COVID vaccine safety study could lose funding in final year after DOGE review

A vaccinologist behind a ground-breaking study into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines is worried US funding cuts could undermine vaccine confidence.

The Global Vaccine Data Network, run from Auckland University, has drawn on data from more than 300 million people to research vaccine safety and efficacy since 2019.

At the end of March, researchers learned that a five year project investigating Covid vaccine safety had been caught up in the Trump administration's funding cuts.

Co-director and associate professor Helen Petousis-Harris said the project was in its final year, and it was heartbreaking to see its delivery now under threat.

"We're four years into it, so we've achieved a huge amount of the work, which is now really bearing the fruits."

She said the work was important for vaccine confidence and future pandemic preparedness, with extensive data sets enabling researchers to answer questions about vaccine safety and rare adverse events robustly.

"To do that you need diverse populations, you need to have populations using those vaccines, and to detect these rare things you need huge numbers of people."

"It was really ground-breaking, the output ... these are by far the biggest studies of its kind to be undertaken."

Petousis-Harris said the project was "collateral damage" at a time when many were undervaluing scientific research.

"It's gutting, but it's not really surprising," she said.

"We are entering into a time now where scientific institutions are being eroded, it destablises and undermines science.

"So the more you strip it away, and the people that do it, the more you feed the narrative that it (science) has no benefit."

She said the team needed to find about US$2 million to finish its work into Covid vaccine safety, after the US health department's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) terminated its funding.

The findings from the Global Vaccine Data Network - "a multinational, investigator-led research network that conducts globally coordinated epidemiological studies on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines" - include the largest-ever study into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines.

A study supported by the CDC as part of its financial assistance totalling US$10,108,491.

The network's website said the Covid vaccine safety study was terminated 13 months early following a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) review.

Greg Murison, chief executive at UniServices - which hosts the project in Auckland - said the global Covid vaccine safety project had received funding from the CDC since 2021.

He said a recent change in policy in the United States had resulted in "major cuts to health funding and research in the United States and globally".

"Recently the CDC informed UniServices that that funding for the GVDN would cease with immediate effect."

He said research that did not rely on CDC funding would continue, but confirmed work was underway to consolidate and secure the data that had been collected on vaccine safety.

The Ministry of Health said it was aware of the overseas funding decisions affecting the network, but said it had not received a request for funding.