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Top health officials plan to announce a link between 25 child deaths and the COVID-19 vaccines, The Washington Post reported today, citing anonymous sources familiar with the situation.
According to The New York Times, the FDA’s Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., is scheduled to present the agency’s findings on the child deaths at next week’s meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine policy.
Høeg has analyzed the vaccine’s impact on children for years. In 2022, she and her colleagues published a peer-reviewed study that showed teenage boys faced greater risk than benefit from getting two doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
Presentations made at ACIP meetings inform the committee’s decision on recommendations.
When asked to confirm the Post’s story, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson Andrew Nixon told The Defender:
“FDA and CDC staff routinely analyze VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] and other safety monitoring data, and those reviews are being shared publicly through the established ACIP process. Until that is shared publicly, any of this should be considered pure speculation.”
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary told CNN last week that the agency is conducting an “intense investigation” into the deaths of young, healthy children following COVID-19 vaccination.
“We are getting the data that was never made available before, including adverse event data — that is, young people who have died from the COVID vaccine. And we’re going to make that available to the medical community in full transparency, because this is the question that Americans are asking.”
The investigation is drawing on VAERS reports, according to Makary and sources who spoke to the Post.
Last month, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the FDA was restricting the approval of the COVID-19 shots for people under age 65 to those at higher risk for severe illness. However, HHS confirmed that healthy people would still have access to the shots.
The announcement raised concerns that insurance plans might not cover the shots for healthy children and adults.
Recommendations by ACIP determine which shots will be covered by the Vaccines for Children Program, which provides vaccines cost-free for children whose parents can’t afford them. The federal program covers costs for more than 50% of children in the U.S.
Since Kennedy’s announcement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical organizations have issued their own COVID-19 shot recommendations, continuing to recommend that all healthy children get the shot — marking the first time in 30 years that the AAP has diverged from the CDC on childhood vaccine recommendations.
The AAP did not immediately respond to The Defender’s request to comment on whether it would continue to recommend the shot if public health officials confirm the link to child deaths.
Prices on shares of both Moderna and Pfizer fell today after the Post published its report, CNBC reported.
‘FDA has been slow-walking review of vaccine deaths for years’
The Defender has been covering child deaths reportedly linked to the COVID-19 vaccines since 2021, including deaths from myocarditis, which the vaccine labels indicate is linked to the COVID-19 vaccines, especially among young people.
Despite the publicly reported evidence linking the shots to child deaths, no action has been taken by public health agencies.
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said early reports and confirmations of death should have led to the withdrawal of the vaccine long ago.
Commenting on the reported 25 deaths linked to the vaccines, he said:
“These deaths should include two teenage boys who died of autopsy-proven COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis in 2021, published by Gill et al online in Archives of Pathology in the same year. The boys’ deaths alone should have prompted market withdrawal of Pfizer mRNA vaccines. Instead, the FDA has been slow-walking review of vaccine deaths for years.
“A late determination in 2025 implicates a long list of officials and agencies in a cover-up of healthy young persons dying after unnecessary COVID-19 mRNA vaccination since 2021.”
A 2021 CDC report into heart injuries and 14 deaths among adolescents ages 12-17 concluded that eight of the deaths were not linked to the shots, and six deaths required further analysis.
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Investigation of VAERS reports
Patients, doctors, pharmacists or anyone who knows of a vaccine injury can file a report in VAERS. The reports are unverified, and the system is not designed to assess whether a vaccine caused a death, according to the Post.
It’s up to the FDA and CDC, which jointly oversee VAERS, to assess whether the vaccine caused the injury and make a final determination.
According to the Post, the report on child deaths that will be made to ACIP involves VAERS reports that have been reviewed. In his CNN interview, Makary said physician-led inquiries included investigating autopsy reports and interviewing family members.
VAERS is a “passive reporting system,” which means it relies on people submitting reports, which doesn’t always happen. A 2011 Harvard report found that less than 1% of all adverse events are reported to VAERS.
Accessing the CDC’s analysis of VAERS reports for the COVID-19 vaccine has been challenging, according to the vaccine-injured advocacy organization React19. The group audited the system and found that 1 in 3 COVID-19 vaccine adverse event reports in VAERS were not posted publicly or were deleted.
In the audit, React19 found that “omission of data and underreporting may be even greater than estimated.” In addition, not all death reports are investigated, according to founder Brianne Dressen.
VAERS data as of Aug. 29 show 202 reports of deaths among children ages 17 and younger following COVID-19 vaccination.
However, according to analyst Albert Benavides, founder of VAERSAware.com, identifying children’s deaths in VAERS is especially challenging. The summaries that accompany the reports often contain the victim’s age, but this information won’t appear when searching for reports by age in VAERS if the age field in the report is empty.
“This is clearly where most dead children are hiding in VAERS,” Benavides said.
He said the summaries of reports with an “unknown” age show “three times the amount of dead children ‘hiding’ in VAERS” compared to the official figure.
As of Aug. 29, VAERS contains 13,457 reports of deaths following COVID-19 vaccination that list an “unknown” age, and 73,176 COVID-19 vaccine injury reports involving people under 18.
Related articles in The Defender- FDA Conducting ‘Intense Investigation’ of Child Deaths Following COVID Shot
- Number of Children Who Died After COVID Shots Much Higher Than VAERS Reports Indicate, Analyst Says
- 7-Year-Old Dies 11 Days After Pfizer Shot, VAERS Report Shows
- Autopsies Show: Vaccinating Teens for COVID Is Literally ‘Heartbreaking’
- 13-Year-Old Michigan Boy Dies 3 Days After Second Dose of Pfizer Vaccine, Aunt Says ‘Moral, Ethical, Health’ Questions Need Answers
