VAERS data released today showed 50,861 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines, including 2,249 deaths and 7,726 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 26, 2021.
Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines revealed steadily rising numbers, but no new trends. VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.
Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received to the system as of Friday of the previous week. Today’s data show that between Dec. 14, 2020, and March 26, a total of 50,861 total adverse events were reported to VAERS, including 2,249 deaths — an increase of 199 over the previous seven days — and 7,726 serious injuries, up 631 over the same time period.
Of the 2,249 deaths reported as of March 26, 28% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 19% occurred within 24 hours and 43% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
This week’s VAERS data show:
19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
45% of those who died were male, 43% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
The average age of those who died was 77.7 and the youngest death was an 18-year-old.
As of March 26, 341 pregnant women had reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 104 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
Of the 578 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 63% of cases were reported after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations — almost twice as many as reported (36%) following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine. Seven cases of Bell’s Palsy were reported with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine (1%).
There were 2,578 reports of anaphylaxis, with 53% of cases attributed to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 44% to Moderna and 3% to J&J vaccine, which was rolled out in the U.S. on March 2.
Using a broadened search for any reference to anaphylaxis in chart notes resulted in 15,193 reports, with 52% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, 45% to Moderna and 3% to J&J. With each vaccine, nearly 42% of anaphylactic reports occurred in people aged 17-44.
According to the CDC’s website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”
To date, the only information the CDC has published related to the investigation of COVID vaccine-related deaths and how those investigations were conducted is a COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Update via the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, published Jan. 27.
An interview in MedPage Today highlighted the shortfalls of the post-marketing surveillance of the COVID vaccine. Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said we are seeing a lot of spontaneous reporting, a lack of formal post-approval studies because vaccines have only received Emergency Use Authorization and vaccines being given outside the healthcare systems — interfering with the ability to rigorously collect observational data.
Although the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have various systems in place to monitor the safety of vaccines, they are not “up and running” and do not have adequate resources behind them, Kesselheim said.
According to Kesselheim, there’s essentially nobody keeping track of COVID adverse reactions in the U.S. and no long-term safety data, but emphasized that this new mRNA technology is “extremely effective and extremely safe.”
On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions about how the CDC conducts investigations into reported deaths, the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done and the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine.
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