Australian state health department permanently halts massive COVID vaccine study, scraps data
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The permanent end to the study comes after it was announced in June 2023 that the study was being defunded with no official reason.
(LifeSiteNews) — Australia’s public health system, Queensland Health, has permanently halted its COVID-19 Vaccination Safety and Efficacy Trial (QoVAX), arguably one of the largest ever studies comparing vaccinated patients to unvaccinated ones.
In a letter addressed to QoVAX participants in March 2025, Metro North Health verified that authorities were permanently ceasing the study, destroying all samples and data as a result.
“Metro North Health has determined that, for a range of reasons including the many mutations of the COVID-19 virus and similar studies from Australia and worldwide, there is no longer a scientific and public health need to retain these biological samples for future study,” read the letter, dated March 19, 2025.
“Therefore, these samples will be appropriately sterilised and disposed of. All study data collected as part of the QoVAX-SET study will be archived for the specified time-period as required by law, however, it will not be accessed or used for any future purpose.”
The permanent end to the study comes after it was announced in June 2023 that the study was being defunded with no official reason, affecting various unpublished research papers that were almost complete.
According to a report by Canberra Daily, the QoVAX Safety and Efficacy Statewide Study was initially created “to better understand the short, medium and long-term impacts of COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines in Queensland,” and comprised “10,000 adult participants across 86% of postcodes, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, generating over 100,000 biospecimens and 11 million data points.”
“With its digitally-integrated biobank and linked data repository, the study promised to enable ongoing research addressing epidemiology, genomics, virology, and immunology, as well as unforeseen complications of COVID vaccines, and long COVID outcomes,” the outlet added.
Notably, QoVAX was one of the only real-world studies to have access to a “comparison set” of participants who had been inoculated, but had not contracted the COVID-19 virus.
Some of Queensland’s most prominent research groups, such as QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, the University of Queensland (UQ), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), James Cook University and Griffith University, participated in the study.
Since its 2023 defunding, specialists, politicians, participants, and the media have questioned the Queensland government’s decision to halt the QoVAX study.