Dylan Bettencourt
Last month, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) investigated 29 deaths of people who recently had their Covid-19 vaccine.
Now the health regulator has come back to say they were unable to link the deaths to the jab.
Sahpra has also received 3,730 reports of adverse side effects from people following their Covid jabs with most of the cases not reported as serious.
“To date, 29 investigations have been completed, of which 26 were coincidental to vaccination,” said Sahpra spokesperson Yuven Gounden.
“This means these deaths were not related to the vaccination. Three cases are unfortunately unclassifiable because there was either no information available about the case or the information was completely inadequate.”
Gounden urged anyone who felt severe side effects following their vaccination to report it to the regulator.
He said cases were typically investigated within 48 hours after the report. He also said it should not be assumed that because a person becomes sick soon after being vaccinated that it was caused by the vaccine.
“There are several factors that are involved in identifying whether a death was caused by the vaccine,” he said.
“In the case of a death which occurred after vaccination, an autopsy or postmortem examination is necessary, and the clinical history of the deceased and any comorbidities and allergies, and concomitant medicines are taken into account.”
Gounden said they are currently investigating 20-23 reports of vaccine side effects.
Sahpra as well as the Health Department will soon launch a website that will communicate all the information regarding side effects in an attempt to improve transparency between the departments and South Africans.
Image source: @Reuters
