SAHPRA: No SA deaths linked to the COVID-19 vaccine

The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) has received 86 reports of people dying after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine – however it says none of them are linked to the jabs.

As of Monday evening, 13 September 2021, nearly 15 million vaccine doses have been administered, with more than seven million having been fully vaccinated.

Briefing media, the regulator said investigations showed that people died either as a result of contracting COVID-19 before being immunised or were infected shortly after inoculation, however none died because of taking an actual vaccine dose.

“So these people that died because of Covid-19, they had already incubated Covid-19 at the time of vaccination or they contracted Covid-19 shortly after being vaccinated, before they could mount an adequate immune response,” National Immunisation Safety Expert Committee chair Professor Hannelie Meyer said.

According to SAHPRA, it has received 2 770 reports of ‘cumulative adverse events following the administering of the COVID-19 vaccine in the period May 17 to August 31, which represents 0.02% of all the doses received nationally.

Out of the 86 fatalities, 40 have been fully investigated. SAHPRA says 34 of the deaths were a coincidence and six were unclassifiable due to lack of information.

“The vast majority of them [people whose deaths were Covid-19-related] had multiple comorbidities. As you’ve seen I think there’s 13 of them that have died of Covid-19 infection and then all the others were coincidental deaths, so they had multiple comorbidities,” Meyer added.

Fund established for vaccine-related incidents

SAHPRA further shed light on government’s ‘No Fault Compensation Scheme’ for adverse events following immunization, which was initially announced by then Finance Minister Tito Mboweni earlier in the year.

As the name suggests, the scheme is aimed at compensating people who may suffer some kind of injury, as a result of having received the COVID-19 vaccine. However the Department of Health’s Marione Schonfeldt the causal link between the vaccine and ‘event’ will first be established by a committee.

“The funding available will be sufficient enough to cover people that suffer from serious adverse events and it will be available for the time period until it is determined that it’s no longer required. But actually it will be there for the foreseeable future as I understand,” Schonfeldt said.