State data shows, COVID-19 vaccination rates appear to have peaked in Arizona.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is still on pause. Now, medical professionals are increasingly worried about vaccine hesitancy.
FULL COVERAGE: COVID-19 vaccine in Arizona
Despite all that, the Centers for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, known as VAERS, shows few major problems with any of the vaccines in use in the U.S.
The site gathers reports of problems following vaccine administration. Those reports can be submitted by anyone and are not verified. Essentially this is raw data.
“They need to investigate to see if they’re actually real and linked to the problem at hand,” says Arizona Medical Association president Dr. Ross Goldberg.
From January to April of this year, there were 104 adverse events reported in Arizona. Nineteen deaths were reported as well as four instances each of breathing trouble, malaise, or a general feeling of being unwell, oxygen saturation decrease and being unresponsive to stimuli.
But Dr. Goldberg cautions, just because things happen, does not mean there is a cause and effect, “If I go drink a bottle of water and walk outside and get hit by a car, you can’t say that the bottle of water made me get hit by the car. So, you have to really look at the whole scenario and map it out.”
That is exactly what he says the CDC and FDA are doing, as they continue to track and investigate reports of adverse reactions involving all the vaccines in use in the U.S.
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