The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said on Saturday that data showed 10 children had died because of COVID-19 vaccination shots.
“There were, it appears, 10 deaths of children from the COVID shots. Now this was data that was accumulated during the Biden administration… we’re going to make that information available that those cases were reviewed,” he told Fox News in an interview.
The New York Times earlier reported that an internal FDA memo concluded that at least 10 children had likely died because of COVID vaccinations, with myocarditis, or heart inflammation, cited as a possible cause.
“There were, it appears, 10 deaths of children from the COVID shots,” he told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” weekend show, citing data gathered during the Biden administration.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sharply changed government policy on COVID vaccines, limiting access to them to people 65 and older, as well as those with underlying conditions.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine crusader before taking on the nation’s top health post under President Donald Trump, has also linked vaccines to autism and sought to rewrite the country’s immunization policies.
During Trump’s first term, when the pandemic erupted, and under his successor Joe Biden, U.S. health officials strongly endorsed the vaccines as lifesaving.
The COVID vaccines released in 2020 were “amazing for people at risk and for older people,” Makary told “Fox & Friends”. But giving certain COVID shots annually to youths now “is not based on science,” he said.
The memo, written by the FDA’s chief medical and scientific officer, Vinay Prasad, did not disclose the ages or health conditions of the children, or the vaccine manufacturers involved, the New York Times said.
Prasad was quoted as calling the finding “a profound revelation” and announcing plans to tighten vaccine oversight, including requiring randomized studies for all subgroups.
The findings of the new FDA review have not been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, the Times reported, adding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine committee is to meet next week.