VAERS lists more than one million reports of adverse reactions after Covid vaccination

The database of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the US now lists 1,530,329 adverse event reports after Covid vaccination, including adverse reactions reported after administration of the new bivalent boosters. The new statistics are dated up to March 3, 2023.

Including adverse reactions reported after administration of the new bivalent boosters, 6,985,276 individual-symptom events are listed (many reports include more than one symptom), but 31,708 reports are described as ‘no adverse event’.

There are 78,440 reports described as vaccination failure and 69,668 listed as “drug ineffective”. There are 34,043 reports of an expired product being administered, 32,978 reports of a product storage error, 29,302 reports of an inappropriate schedule of product administration, 26,183 reports of off-label use, 13,589 reports of a product being administered to patient of an inappropriate age, and 11,095 reports of an incorrect dose being administered.

VAERS now has a separate category, ‘COVID19-2’, which contains data about the new bivalent boosters. In this category, there are 23,999 reports of adverse reactions up to March 3, 211 reports of death after vaccination, and 307 reports of permanent disability (196 after administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 111 after administration of the Moderna vaccine). A total 88,165 individual-symptom events are listed, but 3,243 reports are described as ‘no adverse event’.

There are 4,093 reports of a product storage error, 2,593 cases of Covid-19, 2,348 reports separately listed as a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, 1,730 reports of the incorrect product formulation being administered, 1,262 reports of underdosing, 1,198 separate reports of an incorrect dose being administered, 1,124 reports of an expired product being administered, 595 reports of the wrong product being administered, 572 reports of an extra dose being administered, 363 reports of a product being administered to patient of an inappropriate age, 333 reports of an inappropriate schedule of product administration, and 306 reports of a “poor quality product” being administered, and 277 reports of a “product preparation issue”.

As of March 8, 2023, 53.9 million people in the US had received a bivalent booster dose.

ALL THE FOLLOWING DATA ARE FROM BOTH COVID VACCINE CATEGORIES COMBINED

There is now a disclaimer on the wonder.cdc.gov website. It states: “At the request of European regulators, CDC and FDA have removed certain data fields (country codes; reported symptom case narrative free text; diagnostic laboratory data free text field; illness at time of vaccination free text field; chronic conditions free text medical history field; allergies free text field) from foreign VAERS reports which were submitted to VAERS and may not comply with European regulations. Domestic (U.S.) VAERS reports are not affected by this process.”

VAERS puts the total number of deaths after Covid vaccination, as of March 3 and in all locations, at 34,653 (17,071 from US states and territories or a location reported as unknown and 17,582 from foreign locations).

This figure includes the 131 reported deaths after administration of the new Pfizer-BioNTech booster and 80 after administration of the new Moderna booster.

According to VAERS, a total 21,820 deaths followed administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, 9,821 followed administration of the Moderna vaccines, and 2,962 followed administration of the Janssen Biotech vaccine. In 233 cases, the name of the vaccine manufacturer was not specified in the report.

A total 4,107 of the reported deaths occurred on the same day as vaccination, 3,119 occurred the following day, 575 occurred within seven days, 1,599 occurred within ten to 14 days, and 2,759 occurred within 15 to 30 days.

According to Worldometers.info there had been 1,148,765 deaths from Covid-19 in the US as of March 11, 2023.

In an update to its website on March 7, 2023, the CDC said that more than 672 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines had been administered in the US from December 14, 2020, to March 1, 2023, and VAERS had received 19,476 preliminary reports of death (0.0029%) among people who received a Covid-19 vaccine. (The figures given on the CDC website do not include adverse event reports from foreign locations.)

The CDC said: “Continued monitoring has identified nine deaths causally associated with J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination.”

According to the CDC’s Covid data tracker, 672,537,312 Covid vaccine doses had been administered in the US as of March 8, 2023.

On VAERS 914,890 reports (up to March 3 and in all locations) relate to adverse events after administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines (4,378,980 individual-symptom events), 519,163 refer to the Moderna vaccines (2,173,498 individual-symptom events), 97,260  refer to the Janssen Biotech vaccine (436,960 individual-symptom events), 256 reports relate to the Novavax vaccine (1,016 individual-symptom events), and 11,040 relate to an unknown vaccine manufacturer (44,893 individual-symptom events).

The total number of reported adverse reactions resulting in permanent disability is put at 64,038. VAERS lists, as of March 3, 45,713 cases after administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, 15,234 after administration of the Moderna vaccines, 3,169 after administration of the Janssen Biotech vaccine, and 11 after administration of the Novavax vaccine. In 312 cases, the vaccine manufacturer was not specified.

As of March 3 VAERS lists 11,270 reports of seizures after Covid vaccination. Some other adverse reactions such as generalised tonic-clonic seizure (1,269), seizure-like phenomena (637), and partial seizures (295) are listed separately.

There are 13,488 reports of a pulmonary embolism and 10,505 reports of thrombosis, with separate listings for specific types of thrombosis, such as deep vein thrombosis (8,789), pulmonary thrombosis (1,139), and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (972). There are 201,703 reports of people being diagnosed with Covid-19 and 55,754 separate reports of a SARS-CoV-2 test being positive

There are 9,412 reports of a cerebrovascular accident, 12,396 reports of sleep disorders, 13,963 reports of herpes zoster (plus 1,708 other herpes zoster reports listed separately, including herpes zoster reactivation), 2,362 reports of blindness, and 3,435 reports of deafness. As of March 3 there were 24,372 reports of tinnitus.

There are also 3,561 reports of spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) listed on VAERS as of March 3 along with 156 reports of stillbirth, 15,727 reports of heavy menstrual bleeding, 4,193 reports of intermenstrual bleeding, 9,276 reports of irregular menstruation, and 4,864 reports of delayed menstruation.

There are 3,244 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) listed on VAERS as of March 3, along with 6,946 reports of Bell’s palsy, 9,216 reports categorised as facial paralysis, and 1,986 reports of facial paresis. There are also 224 cases of “facial asymmetry” listed on VAERS.

There are 16,641 reports of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) after Covid vaccination listed in the VAERS data up to March 3, 2023. VAERS lists 85 reports of viral myocarditis, 22 cases of eosinophilic myocarditis, ten cases of giant cell myocarditis, nine cases of hypersensitivity myocarditis, eight cases of infectious myocarditis, six cases of immune-mediated myocarditis, five reports of autoimmune myocarditis, four cases of septic myocarditis, three cases of post-infection myocarditis, three cases of chronic myocarditis, three cases of mycotic myocarditis, two cases of bacterial myocarditis, two cases of coxsackie myocarditis, and one case of enterovirus myocarditis.

The VAERS data also includes 11,037 reports of pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart), 666 cases of myopericarditis, 102 cases of pleuropericarditis, 58 cases of viral pericarditis, 36 cases of constrictive pericarditis, 16 cases of infective pericarditis, five cases of purulent pericarditis, three cases of adhesive pericarditis, two cases of bacterial pericarditis, two cases of autoimmune pericarditis, one case of uraemic pericarditis, one case of rheumatic pericarditis, one case of gonococcal pericarditis, one case of cytomegalovirus pericarditis, and one case of lupus pericarditis.

A total 8,846 reports of an anaphylactic reaction after Covid vaccination are listed up to March 3.

EudraVigilance

EudraVigilance now lists 2,216,055 adverse reaction cases reported after the administration of Covid vaccines in Europe. The data is up to March 14, 2023.

The database lists 1,207,353 individual cases up to March 14 for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine tozinameran. Most are from Germany (213,963), followed by France (128,121), and the Netherlands (125,660).

A total 6,055 cases are listed for the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent booster vaccine (tozinameran, riltozinameran) that targets the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, which is no longer circulating, and the Omicron BA.1 subvariant, which has been de-escalated by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Most cases are from the Netherlands (2,168), followed by Belgium (370), and Germany (232).

A total 6,901 cases are listed for the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent booster vaccine (tozinameran, famtozinameran) that targets the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. Most cases are from Germany (1,198), followed by Spain (966), and France (610).

A total 544,031cases are listed for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine with the most listed in Germany (54,450), followed by Austria (41,270), and the Netherlands (38,000).

A total 371,216 cases are listed for the Moderna vaccine (elasomeran). Most are from Germany (64,694), followed by the Netherlands (49,859), and France with 33,990.

A total 7,438 cases are listed for the Moderna bivalent booster vaccine (elasomeran, imelasomeran) that targets the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the BA.1 subvariant. Most are from the Netherlands (3,466), followed by Spain (65), and France (48).

A total 359 cases are listed for the Moderna bivalent booster vaccine (elasomeran, davesomeran) that targets the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. Ten cases are listed for Germany, nine for Norway, and six for France, along with five cases in Ireland and five in Italy, but further data for individual countries is not available.

A total 71,093 cases are listed for the Janssen Biotech vaccine. Most are from the Netherlands (15,075), followed by Germany with 11,979, and Austria (11,202).

A total 1,579 cases are listed for the Novavax vaccine. Most are from Germany (991), followed by Italy with 160 cases, and France with 111.

A total 27 cases are listed for the Valneva vaccine. Fifteen cases are listed for Germany and nine for Austria. The location of the other three reports isn’t given.

Three cases are reported for the VidPrevtyn Beta vaccine, developed by Sanofi Pasteur, but the location of the reports isn’t given.

There is more detail about these statistics on my Changing Times website along with data from other adverse event databases.

The World Health Organisation updates its VigiBase statistics every Sunday.

The EudraVigilance statistics are usually updated on Saturdays.

The European Medicines Agency had a technical problem with the http://adrreports.eu website for a few days whereby incorrect data appeared after the latest update on March 11 (for several medicines, not just Covid vaccines). The system went down for a while, but the problem has now been fixed.

The technical issue was solely related to the data displayed on the public interface http://adrreports.eu. It didn’t affect the EudraVigilance source database.

EudraVigilance doesn’t give a total of deaths reported after administration of each of the Covid-19 vaccines authorised for use in Europe, or a combined total. These figures can only be obtained by selecting reaction group categories, such cardiac disorders, and adding up all the individual totals.