No stroke cases following bivalent jabs reported by those given payouts for adverse reactions
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The Moderna bivalent vaccine was rolled out in Singapore on Oct 14, 2022, and a total of 482,666 doses have been administered.
PHOTO: ST FILE
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SINGAPORE – None of the individuals who received payments under the Vaccine Injury Financial Assistance Programme
Dr Janil said in Parliament on Tuesday that the Ministry of Health (MOH) monitors and looks for safety signals across the entire population of people who took the vaccines and go to clinics or receive medical care at hospitals.
“We are looking for that signal, that safety signal that this type of adverse event has increased, and it has not,” he added.
MOH said in late January that a total of 413 people had received payouts under Vifap as at Dec 31, 2022, up from 296 at the end of 2021.
Vifap supports people who experience serious side effects from Covid-19 jabs.
Dr Janil was responding to Ms Joan Pereira (Tanjong Pagar GRC), who asked if MOH is studying the preliminary safety concerns flagged by the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine safety surveillance system on an alleged increased risk of stroke for people aged 65 and older who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 bivalent vaccine.
The Health Sciences Authority (HSA) said in its latest safety update published last Thursday that the Moderna bivalent vaccine was rolled out in Singapore on Oct 14, 2022, and a total of 482,666 doses have been administered.
The Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent vaccine was rolled out here on Dec 12, 2022, and 202,382 doses have been administered, it added.
On Jan 14, MOH had said that local data on the bivalent Covid-19 vaccines did not show an increased risk of ischaemic stroke
Upon further investigation, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US had assessed that the preliminary concern of an increased risk of stroke was very unlikely to reflect a true risk.
Furthermore, the signal of a possible risk was neither observed nor validated in other US safety systems or by other countries.
On Tuesday, Dr Janil also said that the HSA’s latest safety report showed that the incidence rate of severe adverse events after taking bivalent vaccines was about one in 100,000 – lower than that of the original vaccines, which was about seven in 100,000.
He added that the CDC and FDA are not making any change to the vaccination practice in the US, and will continue to monitor the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines.
Similarly, the Expert Committee on Covid-19 Vaccination and the HSA in Singapore maintained that the benefits of the Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 bivalent vaccines continue to outweigh the risks, especially for vulnerable individuals, he said.
