Social Media Posts Misrepresent FDA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Research
by Saranac Hale Spencer
Dec 23, 2022
5 minutes
SciCheck Digest
A vaccine safety surveillance study from the Food and Drug Administration has been misrepresented online. The paper did not establish a link between the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and blood clots, as some have claimed — and to date, other, more robust research has not identified such associations.
No vaccine or medical product is 100% safe, but the safety of vaccines is ensured via rigorous testing in clinical trials prior to authorization or approval, followed by continued safety monitoring once the vaccine is rolled out to the public to detect potential rare side effects. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration inspects vaccine production facilities and reviews manufacturing protocols to make sure vaccine doses are of high-quality and free of contaminants.
One key vaccine safety surveillance program is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which is an early warning system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA. As its website explains, VAERS “is not designed to
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