Shares of Pfizer and Moderna tumbled Friday after a Washington Post report said Trump administration health officials plan to present data linking Covid-19 vaccines to the deaths of 25 children at an upcoming meeting of a key federal vaccine advisory panel.
Pfizer's stock fell more than 3% while Moderna plunged 7% following the report, which cited four people familiar with the matter. BioNTech, Pfizer's vaccine partner, dropped over 9% and Novavax fell more than 4%. The news rattled investors ahead of next week's meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine eligibility and coverage recommendations.
The Washington Post reported the claim appears to be based on submissions to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database that contains unverified reports of possible vaccine side effects from patients, doctors and pharmacists. The CDC notes that VAERS data does not establish causality and must be further investigated before conclusions can be drawn.
"FDA and CDC staff routinely analyze VAERS and other safety monitoring data, and those reviews are being shared publicly through the established ACIP process," a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. "Until that is shared publicly, this should be considered pure speculation."
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary told CNN last week that the agency is conducting an "intense investigation" into whether Covid shots caused deaths in children. "We do know at the FDA, because we've been looking into the [vaccine safety] database of self reports, that there have been children who have died from the Covid vaccine," Makary said, though he did not provide specific data and said a report will be released in the coming weeks.
Moderna responded Friday by saying its vaccine safety is "rigorously monitored" by regulators in more than 90 countries and that "systems across the U.S., Australia, Canada and Europe have not identified any new or undisclosed safety concerns in children or in pregnant women." Pfizer did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The news comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushes to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy. Kennedy has dropped routine Covid vaccine recommendations for healthy children, teens and pregnant women and narrowed eligibility to older adults and those with underlying health conditions. He has also replaced all 17 members of the CDC's vaccine panel with his own appointees ahead of the Sept. 18-19 meeting.
