In recent weeks, a story suggesting that a young girl died in Virginia, USA, after being given the Pfizer vaccine has been going viral online. The story was circulating as America approaches approval for giving the vaccine to children aged 12-15 by the end of the month, making health officials eager to reassure the public that the vaccine is safe.
The allegation first surfaced in an April 30 article from Natural News, which was shared as a screenshot on Facebook the next day.
It implied that the young girl fell sick from the first dose of the vaccine, saying that she had been hospitalised in mid-February.
It went on to say that she got her second jab of the Pfizer vaccine later that month, before suffering from severe side effects which ultimately led to her death.
The headline read: “Two-year-old baby DIES during Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine experiments on children.”
Kristen Nordlund, a representative of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told USA Today that the original report of the girl’s death is “completely made up”.
It originated from a submission to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which allows users to submit unverified vaccine side effects.
According to the CDC, VAERS was developed in 1990 to find any potential safety issues with vaccines.
A CDC disclaimer for the system says: “A report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, only that the adverse event occurred some time after vaccination.
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With the trials on children underway in the USA, results are expected towards the end of this year.
Pfizer is hopeful that it will receive approval to vaccinate children by early 2022.