The number of vaccine injury reports that poured in after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines caught officials off guard, newly disclosed documents show.
The contractor hired for $9.4 million to process reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System estimated a maximum of 1,000 reports per day—the “worst case scenario—according to one document. But the number of reports broke through the “red line” on Dec. 26, 2020—less than three weeks after U.S. regulators authorized COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer.
“Two vaccines have been released since the last report. Since release the number of incoming COVID-19 reports has significantly exceeded the estimated maximum of 1,000 reports per day,” General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), the contractor, informed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a status report on Jan. 15, 2021. “As a result, GDIT is unable to meet processing and other timeframes (data processing, telephone inquiries, clinical inqu[i]ries, etc.).”…