The White House COVID-19 working group has called on the Centers for Disease Control to conduct a comprehensive study of how many Americans have died since receiving the vaccine and the circumstances that led to its death, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
Officials are not worried that the vaccine will have adverse effects on a large number of recipients. Instead, they are pushing the study to ensure the federal government has a more complete picture of mortality at the age of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to collect more data about the vaccine, its effectiveness, and what happened to the recipients after they got the sting.
It is a particularly urgent issue, given the vulnerable and aging populations receiving the vaccine. According to the CDC, about 3 percent of 75-year-olds die during the next year of life. With millions of people receiving the vaccine, it is likely that some will die in a matter of weeks or months, for reasons that may or may not have anything to do with COVID-19. Some people who receive it are also expected to move between the first and second dose or after the regiment is completed, officials said, especially if they have advanced pre-existing disease.
The White House coronavirus working group wants to know if people who have been shot died as a result of a vaccination-related adverse event, such as anaphylaxis, from a coronavirus-related disease such as pneumonia or something else.
Currently, the CDC does not have a good way to track deaths that occur after real-time vaccination, officials said. The study should come from state health departments, many of which are already overwhelmed by other COVID-19-related data collection efforts, including testing, case positivity, hospitalizations, and vaccine distribution.
The CDC has worked over the past year to reduce the shortcomings of COVID-19 data reports, but has struggled to gather timely information from some state health departments. The agency’s COVID mortality data set, its information on how many people suffered coronavirus-related deaths, is currently about five weeks behind schedule, officials said. Its vaccine complication tracking system is far from exhaustive. With 4,000 people dying a day and one million more receiving the COVID vaccine, these data gaps and delays can present a particularly blurry picture. The agency is working on a 2020 mortality report that analyzes coronavirus-related deaths during the first year of the pandemic. It will be released sometime in the spring, officials said, adding that there are no current plans to include vaccination data in the current CDC COVID-19 mortality analysis.
The struggle to find a way to complete the key vaccine mortality study reveals growing frustration among officials working on the pandemic response that the federal government does not yet have in collecting, analyzing, and reporting COVID-19. It also underscores the extent to which the federal government relies on often underfunded state health departments to accurately portray reality on the ground.
The study’s request comes amid a push from the Biden administration to update and reform the way the federal government collects data about COVID-19 and how it transmits that data to the public. The president signed an executive order on Jan. 21 to ensure the administration’s response to the pandemic “is guided by the best data and science available.”
Officials have been debating in recent days whether the existing HHS Protect system would be maintained, a platform through which the Department of Health and Human Services monitors how hospitals across the country were managing the increase in cases of COVID-19. The system, accessible to state and federal officials, tracks hospital supplies, cases, and tests, among other things. CDC officials are also understanding and clarifying the discrepancies between the agency’s vaccination tracker and state vaccine distribution control boards. The lack of accurate data has frustrated officials trying to improve the distribution process.
In addition, the White House this week released previously hidden reports of COVID-19 describing, among other things, each state’s outbreak, hospitalizations, and the supply of personal protective equipment. The data in these reports appear to be similar to those collected by HHS Protect.
Healthcare workers are already sending information to CDC about patients who die after vaccination through the Vaccine Adverse Event Information System (VAERS), a platform managed by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration that detects possible vaccine safety issues. VAERS data is based on presentations from health professionals who report “any significant health problems that occur after vaccination.” Officials familiar with the system say VAERS mortality data in these cases are usually related to vaccination, although the CDC states that “an adverse event may be reported even if it is uncertain or unlikely that the vaccine ‘has caused’.
On Wednesday, at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), officials from CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine safety working group presented preliminary data they have collected through the VAERS system. (ACIP is a group of medical and public health experts that provides public health recommendations and guidance on the safe use of vaccines).
Slides posted on the CDC website show that the federal government has collected a total of more than 9,000 reports through the VAERS system since the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine began, an incredibly small percentage of the total vaccines administered. Many of the reports indicate that people who have received the vaccine have experienced symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and chills. The data also show that VAERS has compiled 196 reports of deaths, although the slides indicate that deaths reported to VAERS are not necessarily related to vaccination.