The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a national vaccine safety surveillance program that monitors the safety of vaccines called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The program helps to detect unusual or unexpected reporting patterns of adverse events from vaccines.
However, a British Medical Journal report found that VAERS is “overwhelmed,” raising concerns that the program could be broken.
The BMJ reports that some doctors and a state medical examiner who have submitted reports to VAERS either haven’t received a prompt follow-up from a clinical reviewer or are being ignored entirely.
According to the BMJ’s investigation, the CDC doesn’t have the staff to handle the incoming reports of vaccine side effects.
Before the pandemic, VAERS received nearly 60,000 adverse event reports annually. However, since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, the system has faced an unprecedented surge, with 1.7 million reports.
“Interestingly, the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System, which collects reports on drugs, does maintain a publicly accessible database that gets updated, as does the agency’s Medical Device Reporting system — raising the question of why VAERS can’t do the same,” the BMJ’s report said.
U.S. childhood vaccination exemptions have just reached their highest level ever.
