The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that the first 22 million Americans were vaccinated against COVID-19 during a January 27 meeting, marking a new milestone in the country’s tumultuous launch of the vaccine.
The CDC’s Immunization Practices Advisory Committee presented Dice on vaccine safety earlier this week, where it was noted that 23.5 million doses of COVID-19 were administered in the country amid “the most intense and comprehensive vaccine safety monitoring program in history”.
Additional safety data revealed that the COVID-19 vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration mainly caused moderate side effects, such as pain at the injection site, fatigue, fever and headaches within a week after inoculation.
“The safety profiles of COVID-19 vaccines are reassuring and consistent with those seen in pre-authorization clinical trials,” says the report.
Looking at a database called the Vaccine Safety Database, the committee’s researchers reported “no sign” of serious adverse side effects, including seizures, heart attacks and other serious reactions among the vaccine recipients included in the database.
Anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reactions, has been recorded from the beginning as a potential side effect in patients with a history of allergies. Based on data from the CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Notification System, 71 individuals were reported to have an allergic reaction after vaccination.
This event was still rare, with five anaphylactic responses occurring per million doses of Pfizer vaccine administered and only 2.8 estimated allergic episodes per million doses of Moderna vaccine.
About 90 percent of the individuals observed reported allergic reactions within the first 30 minutes after being vaccinated.
The committee also analyzed patient outcomes specifically for residents of long-term care facilities, one of the most dangerous environments for a COVID-19 outbreak. Among the 1.3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine administered in long-term care facilities, 11,440 deaths were reported in the same period, between December 21 and January 18.
The researchers emphasize, however, that “mortality in LTCF [long-term care facility] residents is high and a substantial number of deaths in this population will occur after vaccination as temporarily associated coincident events ”, which means that there is no direct relationship between fatalities and a COVID-19 vaccination.
The overall results indicate that COVID-19 vaccinations are safe to administer and that more data-centric measures to monitor vaccinated populations will be needed in the future.
President Biden’s goal is to have 100 million Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 in the first 100 days of his presidential term, setting an approximate deadline of April 29, 2021.
Novavax, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have made recent progress in announcing data from successful clinical trials and gaining approval in selected regions. Pfizer and Moderna are also on track to manufacture millions of additional doses to supply states in Biden’s effort for more stable implementation.