California is launching hundreds of thousands of doses of the coronavirus vaccine, which was paused on Sunday after the vaccine batch was linked to a group of allergic reactions in San Diego last week.
The issue was examined by the state committee that reviews the safety of the vaccine against coronavirus and other agencies, according to state health officer, Dr. Erica Pan.
“Yesterday, we brought together the Western States Scientific Review Task Force and other allergy and immunology experts to examine the evidence collected,” the California Department of Public Health said in a statement late on Wednesday. “We had additional discussions with the San Diego County Department of Public Health, the FDA, the CDC and the manufacturer, and found no scientific basis to continue the break. Suppliers that discontinued the vaccine administration of Lot 41L20A from Moderna can resume immediately. “
The vaccines in question were from a batch of 330,000 Modern vaccines that were sent to 287 healthcare providers in California in early January and were suspended on Sunday because six health workers who received the vaccine in San Diego last week apparently developed allergic reactions after receiving this. The six people were treated and recovered.
No other allergic reactions have been reported on the lot other than the San Diego cluster.
Some vaccines in the batch had already been administered at the time of the pause, but it is unclear exactly how many were used. The suspension of vaccines meant that several counties and providers received significantly less doses than they expected.
San Francisco, for example, received about 8,000 doses of the Moderna batch and had to interrupt administration, which left the health department in a position to run out of vaccines until Thursday. Now that the state has allowed health professionals to use them again, there would be no more projections for San Francisco without doses until Thursday.
Each batch, or batch, of vaccine receives a batch number from the manufacturer. The vaccines in question were from lot number 41L20A.
Serious allergic reactions to vaccines are very rare. There is no data on how many allergic reactions have occurred with the Modern vaccine. But for a similar coronavirus vaccine, made by Pfizer, the risk is about 1 in 100,000.
The state said the findings “should continue to give Californians confidence that vaccines are safe and effective and that the systems in place to ensure vaccine safety are rigorous and science-based.”
Catherine Ho is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: Cat_Ho