According to the Epoch Times, a growing number of studies indicate that individuals may be at a heightened risk of stroke when they receive both COVID-19 and influenza vaccines simultaneously. Here’s how the article begins:
Researchers with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently said they identified an increased risk of stroke for some elderly people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines concomitantly with a high-dose/adjuvanted influenza vaccine.
An increased risk for people under 65 was found for people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and a flu shot on the same day, researchers with Kaiser Permanente reported soon after.
Safety monitoring by the FDA and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) previously found a safety signal for Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine and ischemic stroke, a type of stroke caused by blood clotting, authorities said in January. And files obtained by the Epoch Times showed the CDC in 2022 detected a signal for the original Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and ischemic stroke among adults.
The link between the vaccines and stroke, according to authorities, is not yet proven, but some experts say the papers boost the position of spacing out shots to reduce the risk of side effects.
“That’s a reasonable thing to do,” Dr. William Schaffner, who advises the CDC on vaccines, told CNN.
Dr. Peter Marks, a top FDA official, told a recent conference that he would space out the influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus vaccines to lessen the risk of adverse events.
“Oftentimes, we suggest if you want to minimise the chance of interactions and minimise confusing side effects from one with another, you wait about two weeks between the vaccines,” he said.
More adults reported adverse events after receiving Pfizer’s vaccine and a seasonal inactivated influenza together than after receiving either vaccine alone, Australian researchers said in another recent study.
Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota Medical School, told the Epoch Times in an email that he generally recommends receiving the COVID-19 and influenza vaccines on separate occasions “so as to not have one vaccine blunt the response of the other”.
One study, for example, found co-administered vaccines induced lower levels of antibodies, which are believed to protect against illnesses.
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