Reports on probe of post-coronavirus vaccination deaths to be made public soon

The Union Health Ministry on Thursday said that it would make the adverse event investigation reports on 19 post-coronavirus vaccination deaths public after a national-level panel of experts reviews all the reports received from the states.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that there had been 19 deaths of people who received the vaccine and in each case, the post-mortem was carried out by a board of three doctors. Subsequently, the State level AEFI (adverse event following immunisation) committee reviewed each of these cases to find out if the vaccine was responsible for the deaths.

None of the deaths has been linked so far to the two Covid-19 vaccines that are being administered to the healthcare workers and front line staff.

Till 1.30 PM on Thursday, as many as 45,93,427 individuals received the first dose of the vaccine. Administering the second dose would start from February 13.

Bhushan said that out of nearly 46 lakh vaccination, there were 8,563 AEFI cases, most of them being minors. There were only 34 cases of hospitalisation, which is 0.0007% of the people who received the vaccine.

Read: Over 97% among 5 lakh respondents surveyed happy with Covid-19 vaccination arrangements, says government

The government’s response on the post-vaccination deaths came after a group of doctors and public health researchers wrote to the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan seeking an investigation into such deaths following a World Health Organisation “protocol of cluster of serious AEFI.”

"It is an absolutely baseless narrative to claim that the government had rushed to certify that there was no causality,” Bhushan said.

The Health Secretary said that the national committee was shortly slated to review the reports received from the states after which they would be put in the public domain.

"After 45 lakh vaccination, the point we would like to amplify is that the vaccine is superbly safe. For every 1,150 cases, there is one side effect,” added V K Paul, NITI Ayog member.

With India battling a huge amount of vaccine hesitancy, experts said the government needed to be more open and transparent about the vaccination to overcome such a hesitancy.