A healthcare worker holds a vial of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine at a pop-up vaccination site operated by SOMOS Community Care during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in New York, January 29, 2021.
Mike Segar | Reuters
Moderna has not found a link between its Covid-19 vaccine and the cases of a rare heart inflammation condition reported in young people, the company said Friday.
The Massachusetts-based biotech company said it made the conclusion after “carefully reviewing the available safety data to date for Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine for cases of myocarditis and/or pericarditis.”
“The company will continue to closely monitor these reports and is actively working with public health and regulatory authorities to further assess this issue,” it said in a statement.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel is holding an emergency meeting on June 18 to discuss rare, but higher-than-expected, reports of heart inflammation in 16- to 24-year-olds after receiving their second dose of Pfizer‘s or Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines.
A CDC official said Thursday that the agency has received reports of 275 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis in that age group as of May 31, higher than the 10 to 102 cases that would be expected.
“We clearly have an imbalance there,” Dr. Tom Shimabukuro of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office said Thursday at a meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. The group met to discuss safety issues surrounding the use of Covid-19 vaccines in children as young as 6 months old.
The CDC’s vaccine safety group said last month that it was looking into heart inflammation conditions in a “relatively few” people who received Covid vaccinations. Officials say they still don’t know whether the condition is truly related to the vaccine.
This is a developing story Please check back for updates.
