Filenews 26 April 2021
Israel's Health Ministry said Sunday it is looking into a small number of cases of heart inflammation in people who had received Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, though it has not yet reached any conclusions.
Pfizer said it has not noticed a higher rate of incidents than expected in the general population, but the Israeli authorities' announcement is enough to create a new headache for politicians and scientists, as well as concern for civilians.
According to the Reuters news agency, the coordinator for Israel's response to the pandemic, Nghman Ash, said a preliminary study showed "dozens of cases" of myocarditis occurred in more than 5 million vaccinated people, mostly after the second dose.
In people under 30 years of age
Ash said it is unclear whether this was unusually high and whether it was linked to the vaccine, with most of the cases reported in people up to 30 years of age.
"The Department of Health is currently examining whether there is excessive morbidity (disease rate) and whether it can be attributed to vaccines," he said.
Speaking on the radio show, he described the incidents as a "question mark" and stressed that the health ministry has not yet drawn any conclusions. But he warned that it will be difficult to connect directly to the vaccine because myocarditis, a condition that often disappears without complications, can be caused by a variety of viruses and a similar number of cases have been reported in previous years.
Pfizer's reaction
Pfizer, which was asked by Reuters about the review, said it is in regular contact with Israel's health ministry to review data on the vaccine.
The company said it was "aware of Israeli myocarditis observations that occurred mainly in a population of young men who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine."
"Adverse reactions are regularly and thoroughly controlled and we have not observed a higher rate of myocarditis than would be expected in the general population. No causal link to the vaccine has been established," the company said.
"There is no evidence at this time to conclude that myocarditis is a risk associated with the use of the Pfizer/BNT COVID-19 vaccine."
Nadav Davidovic, director of Ben Gurion University's institute of public health, said that even if there is a link to myocarditis and the vaccine, the side effects do not appear to be serious enough to stop it being administered.
Source: news.in.gr
