Despite extensive evidence supporting the strong safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines for children, an internal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) memo uses reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to claim that at least 10 children died “after and because of receiving” the COVID vaccine. The memo does not provide additional evidence, and its claims have been criticized by 12 former FDA commissioners as well as by current FDA staff. Reports of side effects can be submitted to VAERS by anyone, and the system is intended to generate hypotheses and identify possible concerns, not establish causality. This memo’s unverified claims may contribute to confusion about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for children.
KFF polling reveals a gap in confidence between COVID-19 vaccines and other childhood vaccines. The KFF/The Washington Post Survey of Parents found that large majorities of parents had positive views of long-standing childhood vaccinations. 90% said vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) were important for children in their community, and 84% were confident they were safe, while 88%, said polio vaccines were important, and 85% said they were confident in their safety. By contrast, smaller shares of parents expressed similar views about COVID-19 vaccines, with 43% saying that the vaccines were important for children to get and that they were safe.
The findings mirror broader public uncertainty about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. KFF’s April Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust showed that 83% of adults expressed confidence in MMR vaccine safety, while just over half (56%) of adults said they believed COVID-19 vaccines were safe. Still, about half (52%) said they did not know enough about mRNA vaccines to say whether they were generally safe or generally unsafe, falling into the “muddled middle” of uncertainty.
The FDA memo may provide what appears to be official validation for parental concerns about vaccine safety, deepening skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines for children. When federal health officials frame unverified VAERS reports as evidence of vaccine-caused deaths, it may become more difficult for health communicators to explain the system’s limitations and the vaccines’ extensive safety evidence, particularly when parents and the general public are already more uncertain about these vaccines than other routine immunizations.