The following information is from Children’s Health Defense.
A new study led by Tanya R. Myers, Ph.D., of the CDC and published in Vaccine analyzed reports from 9.61 million Americans who completed at least one health survey through the agency’s V-safe active surveillance program after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
The study found that short-term health impacts were most common during the first week after vaccination, particularly after second mRNA doses and more frequently following Moderna than Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations were reported infrequently.
Researchers said V-safe was designed to monitor expected short-term reactions, such as fatigue, fever, soreness and temporary disruptions to daily activities. They noted the system was not designed to diagnose rare serious adverse events or determine whether reported medical events were caused by vaccination.
Because V-safe is a voluntary, self-reported surveillance program involving about 3.6% of vaccinated Americans, the study also cannot estimate the true incidence of adverse events in the broader US population. Researchers said rare serious adverse events are evaluated through complementary surveillance systems such as VAERS and the Vaccine Safety Datalink.
The study’s supplemental data showed that among the relatively small number of participants who continued completing surveys six weeks after their first dose, some reported feeling worse than before vaccination or believed their health problems might be related to vaccination. The investigators cautioned that those findings should be interpreted carefully because participation had dropped sharply, making the results susceptible to response bias.
TrialSite News said the V-safe findings provide information about short-term vaccine reactions but do not answer questions about rare, delayed or long-term adverse events. It also cited emerging research from Yale examining persistent symptoms reported by some patients after vaccination.
For more information, read the full article here.
