As more and more Americans are getting COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC is tracking side effects through a smart-phone based application called “V-Safe.”
The most common symptoms that have been reported include fatigue, muscle and joint pain, fever, redness, and swelling at the injection site, skin rashes and headaches. The V-Safe program is an addition to the CDC’s long-standing vaccine tracking program called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS was created in 1990 and is a voluntary surveillance system, monitored by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and available for anyone (doctors, patients, parents, other health care providers, etc.) to report any adverse event that occurred after receiving a vaccine.
VAERS data is public and can be downloaded, but journalists should be mindful that the VAERS system is an unverified reporting system, and the reports in VAERS don’t mean that the symptoms reported are caused by the vaccines.