Vaccines are the most effective way to prevent infectious diseases. They're designed so they do not give people the infection they're protecting against.

Research into vaccines is the only way to find out which vaccines will work. Researchers need people to take part in their studies so they can find out which possible new vaccine works best. NHS Digital have been working with National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to provide a coronavirus vaccine studies volunteer sign up service which will provide a pool of volunteers across the United Kingdom. In England, the research partner of the NHS is the NIHR. The NIHR has worked with equivalent NHS research partners in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales on the coronavirus vaccine studies volunteer sign up service covers all these countries.

The data shown on the dashboard is the number of volunteers in the UK, by local authority and NHS geography. This can be broken down by age, gender, and ethnicity.

The count of volunteers is the number of people signed up for the coronavirus vaccine studies volunteer service across the United Kingdom where they have given permission to be contacted for a vaccine study and have completed the verification process.

All geographies have been derived from the volunteer's postcode.

English regions have been derived from the Local Authority. For other UK nations these are shown as the individual countries.

Data where the Local Authority, NHS geography or region could not be derived is not shown in the map or table, but is included in the total UK counts. Data where the age and/or gender and/or ethnicity is unknown is also not shown in the map or table, but is included in the UK total. When filters are applied, the charts, table and map will update automatically. This includes percentages and colour gradients.

The map will only display data by Local Authority. The table can be viewed by Local Authority or NHS geography by using the filter, Geography Type. NHS geographies include Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) for England and the equivalents for Wales and Northern Ireland. For Scotland, it includes Scottish Health Boards. To show the lower geography breakdowns in the table, please select the region of interest from the Table Region(s) filter.

In order to protect confidentiality, no visual is displayed for sub-national breakdowns where a value is between 1 and 7 from the data presented. All other sub-national level data has been rounded to the nearest 5. When calculating percentages at a sub-national breakdown, a percentage or rate is calculated using the rounded numerator and denominator where the rounded numerator and denominator are greater than 5. Percentages will only be displayed where the rounded denominator is greater than or equal to 400. Therefore regional and local authority counts will not sum to the UK figure.