The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating whether there’s a link between COVID-19 vaccines and deaths in adults, Bloomberg reported on the 9th.Bloomberg noted that the FDA has launched a broader investigation into the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
While authorities have previously primarily investigated the vaccines’ effects on children, the agency has now expanded its investigation to include adults.
An FDA spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg that day, “We are conducting a thorough investigation of deaths potentially related to COVID-19 vaccines across multiple age groups.”
According to Bloomberg, Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA’s vaccine division, notified employees in an internal memo last month that stricter standards would be applied to vaccinations.
Twelve former heads of the FDA subsequently expressed concern in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), a prominent medical journal, that the move “undermines the regulatory model designed to ensure vaccine safety, effectiveness, and availability.”
Previously, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. have questioned the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, and he canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the development of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines, the technology behind Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.
vaccines are developed using mRNA, which contains the virus’s genetic information. While mRNA-based vaccines are difficult to develop, they have the advantage of being able to respond quickly to mutations by simply inserting the virus’s genetic information.