Health organizations from around the world have identified a short list of mild and temporary side-effects that individuals may experience when taking the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, or Comirnaty as it is now known, and a handful of serious side-effects. Some social media posts have recently recycled claims from 2022 that suggest documents from Pfizer indicate their COVID-19 vaccine has more than 1,200 side-effects associated with it. This is false. The document from Pfizer includes a list of adverse events of special interest, which are described as medical events that may follow immunization, but are not necessarily linked to taking the vaccine.
Some posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, "the Pfizer vaccine has 1,291 side effects listed," with a link to a document from the pharmaceutical company. While another from earlier this month included what appears to be a screenshot of the listed adverse events of special interest, adding, "Remember this? Side effects associated with the convid shots. The amount of people that just ignore this is astounding."
A user who's profile indicates she is from Canada also posted a similar on X saying, in part, "Pfizer's own Documents show 1500+ side effects."
At the time of publication, one post had more than 42,000 views and nearly 400 reposts.
Rating: False
Pfizer submitted the document titled to the United States Federal Drug Administration in 2021 as part of its , which is an application that pharmaceutical companies must complete to request permission to distribute a biologic product across states.
Pfizer relied on a number of worldwide safety databases, including the U.S.'s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, to track adverse events of special interest after vaccination. These systems require self-reporting and are not designed to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event. A report does not mean the vaccine caused the event.
The document warns that some clinical information, such as medical history and the time between vaccination and reported illness, was missing or incomplete from reports.
"An accumulation of adverse event reports does not necessarily indicate that a particular adverse event was caused by the drug; rather, the event may be due to an underlying disease or some other factors, such as past medical history or concomitant medication," the document reads.
Some of the adverse events listed include: caesarean section, coronavirus test and oral herpes.
´ºÉ«Ö±²¥reached out to Pfizer for comment but did not receive one by deadline.
The company told in 2022 that the adverse event reports from their COVID-19 vaccine are not confirmed adverse events to the shot. They "may not have any causal relationship" to each other, the company told the outlet.
It went on to say that the company has "robust processes" in place to assess the potential safety risks of every product and that this kind of data is collected for all of Pfizer's products to monitor safety issues that might not have been flagged in clinical studies.
The report ultimately found the data did not reveal any novel safety concerns or risks.
Confirmed side-effects
Research has found there are some temporary side-effects associated with Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.
Some of these side-effects are included under the list of adverse events of special interest in the Pfizer document. However, only once an adverse event is confirmed to be caused by the vaccine is it then considered a side-effect.
Health agencies have determined, like with other vaccines, it is common to have temporary side-effects that can last a few hours to a few days after receiving Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine.
said this is due to the body's immune response, as it's working to build protection against the disease.
It said some of the common side-effects may include redness, soreness and swelling at the injection site. Other more general symptoms may be chills, fatigue, joint pain, headache, mild fever, muscle aches, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and swelling of the lymph nodes.
Some of the rare side-effects that have been reported and confirmed after taking the vaccine are myocarditis and pericarditis, facial paralysis and anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction).
Similarly, the in the U.S. said side-effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine can vary from person to person and that adverse events after vaccination are rare.
Health providers say evidence indicates the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines continue to outweigh the risks of the disease.
Sources
Social media claims can be found on X (), () and ()
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- Reuters ()
- Health Canada ()
- COVID-19 ()
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