There is a reassuring safety profile for the Pfizer and Moderna shots in long-term care residents so far, with no deaths attributed to the shots and few severe reactions reported in the first month of the rollout, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Between December 14, 2020 and January 13, 2021, long-term care residents made up two-thirds of 113 post-vaccination deaths reported during this time. Half of these residents were in hospice or had do-not-resuscitate status. Incidence was split about evenly between people who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine.
In people for whom death certificates and autopsy information was available, the cause of death is consistent with expected all-cause mortality in this population, wrote Tom Shimabukuro, M.D., MPH, of the CDC’s COVID-19 Response Team, and colleagues. There is no indication of any unexpected pattern that might suggest a causal relationship with vaccination, he and his colleagues concluded.
Data was voluntarily reported to the agency’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
For more details on the report, visit McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
