Business 20 January 2023, 8:55am

Israel finds no link between Pfizer Covid shot and stroke

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Israel has not identified any evidence linking strokes to an updated coronavirus vaccine made by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, according to a health ministry official, Reuters reported on Friday.

Last Friday (13 Jan), the the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a joint statement claiming that the agencies were assessing data regarding Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine bivalent increases the risk of ischemic stroke in elders.

We have not turned up such a finding, even after we went back and rechecked all our data after the FDA announcement,

said Salman Zarka, the head of Israel’s coronavirus task force said in a video briefing sent to Reuters on Thursday.

Some 389,648 people in Israel have so far taken the shot, which targets the original strain and its BA.4/BA.5 Omicron subvariant.

On Wednesday, the European Union’s drug regulator also said it had found no safety signals in the region related to Pfizer’s bivalent shot.

"EMA can confirm that to date no such signal has been identified in the EU. EMA will continue to evaluate all available data to determine whether emerging safety information could point to a similar signal in the EU," the agency told Reuters in response to a question.