Wrong covid vaccine - advice please

[RampantIvy]

DD (21) is back in her university city and went to a drop in centre to get her second Pfizer covid vaccine, only to be told that she should be having the AZ vaccine. It looks like whoever updated her NHS record has recorded the wrong information.

Her vaccine card states that she had the Pfizer jab, and she knows herself that she had the Pfizer. The centre wouldn't give her the Pfizer jab and told her to contact where she had her original jab, which is in our local town.

119 is useless and just directs me and her to a website. Can anyone advise how this can be resolved quickly as she wants her second jab before lectures start.

Thank you in advance

My DD's partner had the same thing happen. They were about to give him Pfizer when he knew he'd had AZ.

Fortunately, as he went up the chain of command at the centre as each person insisted he was wrong, eventually the person in charge of the whole thing, suddenly asked him what time of day he came for his first jab on that date. It turned out that they'd been doing Pfizer in the morning and AZ in the afternoon. When he replied (not being aware of that) that it had been afternoon, they finally believed him. Obviously the vaccinator had got used to writing typing Pfizer into the computer and had a brain fart after giving him his AZ.

What would have happened if it hadn't become clear, I don't know.

TBH I don't think there is going to be any kind of problem if she gets the other jab - in fact there are studies (I think) that show that combining the two can give very good protection. Just take the second jab!

AZ isn’t recommended for under 40s as the risks outweigh the benefits for most people, women in particular. So surely someone will believe she was give Pfizer! I think you’re going to just keep bothering the GP and calling 119 until it gets resolved

Can she phone the place where she had her first dose and get them to confirm what she had? When I was working at a vaccine hub, whatever was on the database was what we were told we had to go by, rather than the card, but we could get confirmation sent from the previous place (or they could make a manual change to the database)

(Only the vaccine centre where she had the first dose would know what batch number they were using on a particular date, which needs to be entered into the system, so another location can't retrospectively change it)

I think contacting where it was done is a good idea. I managed to get through to an actual person on 119, and he confirmed that some input mistakes have been made, and that DD can contact her GP to get her records updated.

While googling for information on this I discovered that 700,000 records have been updated incorrectly

Altering the records does need to be done by the centre that gave the first vaccine. Could you pop in for her if she sent you a photo of her card and a letter of authorisation to deal with the issue?

Good idea about the letter of authorisation. I will ask her to do one. Thank you.