The two Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States have reassuring safety profiles, with no concern for new problems found in data collected since the first month of vaccination, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
After administering 13.8 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to the population of the United States, most reports indicated non-serious side effects of the type expected, such as headaches and fatigue. No deaths were attributed to vaccines, the data showed.
The CDC collected data between December 14, 2020 and January 13, 2021 from an existing national surveillance system for adverse events and its own established security monitoring system for Covid-19 vaccines.
Complete coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
During that time, 6,994 notifications of adverse events after vaccination were recorded in the national surveillance system, with 90.8% of them classified as non-serious and 9.2% as serious.
Rare cases of anaphylaxis, a serious allergic reaction that requires medical attention, have been reported with both vaccines at a rate of 4.5 cases per million doses administered, below the rate previously reported by the agency of 5 per million doses administered. The rate of anaphylaxis associated with Covid vaccines is similar to other vaccines, said CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday during the White House Covid Response Team 19 meeting.
“Health care providers and vaccine recipients can rest assured about the safety of Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines,” said the CDC in its Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report.
A total of 113 deaths were reported, including death certificates and autopsy reports. No causal link between vaccination with Covid-19 and fatalities was found, according to the CDC report.