TAMPA, Fla. — On Wednesday, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel acknowledged a “likely link” between COVID-19 vaccinations and heart inflammation in children and young adults.
The CDC has confirmed more than 300 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in people 30 and younger who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Those mRNA vaccines are approved for those as young as 12 and 16, respectively.
The confirmed cases represent a fraction of the more than 138 million Americans fully vaccinated with those shots.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices' independent advisors said the benefits of the vaccines still outweigh the risks of heart inflammation in young people. They agreed while rare, a warning about the risk should be added to the FDA’s fact sheet on the vaccines.
They also discussed the need for more analysis and monitoring. Part of the monitoring comes through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
The online reporting database allows anyone to report potential side effects of vaccines. Health care providers are required to report certain symptoms.
To get a sharper insight, we spoke with Dr. Jill Roberts from USF’s College of Public Health. Roberts says it’s crowdsourcing for potential vaccine side effects.
“VAERS is actually designed to pick up any after-marketing side effect that could actually show up in a vaccine. So, this system is good, to actually put some alerts out there. But unfortunately, it does have some issues. So, one of the issues being of course, that anyone can report to VAERS, which means that there's not necessarily an accuracy in the report,” she explained.
She says just because a symptom is reported to VAERS does not mean a vaccine caused it. Knowingly filing a false VAERS report is against federal law and the CDC has to verify reports.
As of Wednesday, there were 20 reports of myocarditis in Floridians 29 and younger who had received the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines. More than 10.6 million Floridians have had at least one dose of the vaccines available.
The CDC continues to recommend COVID-12 vaccination for everyone 12 years of age and older given the benefits -- one being bringing an end to the pandemic -- outweigh the known and potential risks, it said in a statement.
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