Overview
- Fact-checkers on Friday addressed viral posts that used a Pfizer safety document to claim the vaccine listed hantavirus as a side effect following reports of a cruise ship outbreak.
- The screenshot comes from a Pfizer post-authorization safety report released through a FOIA case, which covered reports through February 28, 2021 and included reference material in its appendix.
- The phrase appears on a list of adverse events of special interest, a regulator-defined tool for extra monitoring that does not show the vaccine caused those conditions, with the list built from sources like the CDC, the EMA ACCESS protocol, the U.K. MHRA, and the Brighton Collaboration.
- Experts noted that many entries in such safety monitoring rely on passive systems like VAERS, where anyone can file a report and the data cannot prove a vaccine caused a reported health problem.
- Public-health agencies say the cruise cases involve the Andes strain, which has shown rare person-to-person spread with close contact, and they assess the wider population risk as very low.