As reports emerge of an upswing in COVID-19 and a push for vaccinations begins, a new report is questioning the reasoning behind the termination of a major system for reporting coronavirus vaccine health incidents.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that a new push for vaccinations will begin this fall, according to ABC.
“Vaccination is going to continue to be key this year because immunity wanes and because the COVID-19 virus continues to change,” a CDC official said. “For those reasons, vaccines remain the best protection against hospitalization and death. And in the case of the COVID vaccines they also help reduce the likelihood of ‘long COVID.’”
Further, the BA.2.86 variant has sparked concern because it appears able to evade existing immunity to the coronavirus, according to The Washington Post.
Now one system used to report adverse reactions to the vaccines is no longer operating.
The federal government created multiple methods to report adverse reactions to vaccines during the federal government’s push for vaccinations.
One of them, an app called V-safe, was phased out earlier this year, the CDC posted.
“On May 19, 2023, CDC closed enrollment in v-safe for COVID-19 vaccines. V-safe was developed specifically for COVID-19 vaccines and has been an essential component of the pandemic vaccine safety monitoring systems that have successfully characterized the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines used in the United States. CDC is developing a new version of v-safe, which will allow users to share their post-vaccination experiences with new vaccines,” the CDC reported on its website.
“CDC will continue to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines through its other vaccine safety monitoring systems. V-safe users or others who get vaccinated can report any possible health problems or adverse events following vaccination to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS),” it posted.
But one critic is not taking that notice at face value.
“Does this mean that the CDC believes that the mRNA Covid-19 injections are so safe, there is no need to monitor adverse event reports any longer? What is the argument against continued monitoring, especially since the V-safe website was already up and paid for?” David Gortler wrote on the website of the Brownstone Institute.
“While CDC’s V-safe was stealthily and abruptly turned off, refusing to accept new safety reports, to this very day the CDC continues to urge everyone ages 6 months and older to stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters,” he wrote.
Noting that the Food and Drug Administration operates the VAERS system, Gortler wrote that in his opinion, “the CDC has concluded that collecting new safety reports is somehow no longer in the interest of America’s public health.”
“Will the CDC opine on the existing data or justify its halting of collecting new safety data? To the best of my knowledge, stopping the collection of public health information doesn’t have a clinical justification or scientific precedence — especially when it comes to an actively marketed product,” he wrote.
Writing on Substack, Megan Redshaw shared those concerns, noting that the shuttered system was easier for Americans to use.
“Instead of reporting your symptoms with the click of a button, you now have to go through an exhaustive process to report your adverse event that will inevitably be added to the discard pile with the rest of the reports,” she wrote.
“The only reason a government agency entrusted to protect our health would shut down an already-paid-for system people use to report events following COVID-19 vaccination is if the data doesn’t support the ‘vaccines are safe and effective’ narrative or if they’re trying to cover something up.
“How convenient the American people are only left with VAERS — a surveillance system our U.S. health agencies deem sufficient when it comes to their failure to improve it and lacking when they need to undermine its glaringly obvious safety signals,” she concluded.
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