Study: No New Serious Safety Concerns for Adolescents Vaccinated With Pfizer Shot

Researchers say there are no new serious safety concerns linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT-162b2) COVID-19 vaccine for teenagers. The new research out of Atlanta is presented in the study “COVID-19 Vaccine Safety First Year Findings in Adolescents,” published in the May 2023 issue of Pediatrics (published online April 21). The authors used data from two complementary U.S. vaccine safety monitoring systems to explore how 15,493,807 adolescents ages 12 to 17 years responded to the vaccine in the first year of administration for that age group. Most reported mild to moderate reactions, most frequently reported on the day after vaccination, and more common after the second dose. Researchers say of the 20,240 adverse event reports, 91.5% were nonserious. Among the adverse events of interest, the authors verified 39 cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (1.2 cases per million vaccinations); 33 (84.6%) of which had evidence of prior severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection. There were also 570 cases of myocarditis (17.7 cases per million vaccinations), most of whom (77%) reported no active symptoms at the time of report.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.