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The U.S. vaccine safety system isn't well-funded enough to answer questions that people urgently want answered, safety experts say

KFF Health News
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Some leading vaccine scientists are calling for more resources to research vaccine safety and support people with claims of injury.

The system isn’t well-funded enough to answer questions that people urgently want answered, experts say.

The current U.S. vaccine safety system began with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986 .

Vaccine Safety Datalink looks for evidence of vaccine harms in electronic health records.

CDC set up the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment project in 2001 .

But the vaccine safety system’s budget has been stuck at around $20 million most years .

As of June 1 , the program has compensated only 39 of nearly 14,000 people who have filed covid vaccine injury claims.

The NIH appears not to have funded studies of postvaccine syndrome, whose symptoms mimic those of long covid.

Genetic studies could help “to determine who might be more susceptible to this condition,” Iwasaki said.

Germany ’s Paul-Ehrlich-Institut , a sort of FDA for vaccines, reported in December that it had reviewed 919 cases.