Washington, United States: A panel of experts convened by the highest US health agency will hold a gathering Wednesday to review data surrounding quite 300 confirmed cases of cardiac muscle inflammation among adolescents and young adults after receiving mRNA Covid vaccines.
The committee, hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will hear a risk-benefit analysis as researchers explore whether the shots can cause myocarditis, also as cases of inflammation of the guts lining, pericarditis.
Israel first was the primary country to spot a possible link.
“These cases are rare, and therefore the overwhelming majority have fully resolved with rest and supportive care,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky last week before the meeting, which was initially scheduled for last Friday but postponed due to a replacement public holiday.
The cases that are confirmed were investigated following initial reports to vaccine safety monitoring systems, and are available from quite 20 million adolescents and young adults that are vaccinated, added Walensky.
While 300 out of 20 million may be a small number, it’s still likely above what would rather be expected for the age bracket .
A previous meeting on the difficulty convened on June 10 by the Food and Drug Administration heard that the majority of the cases were among young men and occurred within every week of the second dose.
The new CDC hearing will dive deeper into updated data that has been independently verified, instead of being self-reported.
Mostly mild cases
Lorry Rubin, director of pediatric infectious diseases at Cohen Children’s center told AFP: “I’m concerned, but I’d emphasize that cause and effect has not yet been established.”
He said that his own hospital had seen a couple of cases of adolescent males developing pain each day or two after the second dose of an mRNA vaccine.
The Pfizer vaccine is currently the sole shot authorized in adolescents aged 12 and up.
“On the opposite hand, the cases are relatively mild,” added Rubin, with the patients returning to normal within a couple of days after treatment with medicine like ibuprofen.
Myocarditis is understood to be seasonal, with higher incidence in summer months potentially linked to enteroviruses, and is estimated to affect one per 100,000 children per annum .
Even if a causal link to the vaccines is established, Rubin said it should be weighed against the risks to children from Covid.
While children are less affected than adults, the virus has still hospitalized quite 3,000 children within the us over the course of the pandemic, and led to quite 300 deaths, consistent with official data. Some 2,700 people under-30 have died from Covid.
“We’ve actually had more kids infected with Covid that we all know who have had future impacts, a number of whom are quite ill with cardiac symptoms within the hospital,” stressed Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Other experts have adopted a more cautious line.
Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases and public health expert at the University of California San Francisco , said that the us had gone beyond another countries’ recommendations on vaccinating teens.
These include Germany and Israel, which only recommend vaccinating adolescents who are at high risk, while Britain remains examining the info and hasn’t yet reached a choice .
