State comptroller investigated how the Israel Ministry of Health handled adverse event reports.
Israeli health officials did not look into hundreds of thousands of reports of problems following COVID-19 vaccination, a watchdog found.
People submitted some 354,200 reports of side effects after COVID-19 vaccination to the Israeli Ministry of Health, but 82 percent of the reports were lost, according to State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman. Officials blamed technical malfunctions.
The Ministry of Health also did not investigate 33,000 additional reports that were filed anonymously, according to Mr. Englman’s probe, even though some of the anonymous reporters provided contact information. The ministry told the watchdog it did not have enough manpower to contact the people who reported adverse events.
Due to the missing data and the lack of follow-up on anonymous reports, the Health Ministry’s communications regarding the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines—primarily the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine used in the country—were based on just 55,000 reports.
Most reports were lodged with health maintenance organizations, which administer Israel’s universal health care system.
Clalit Health Services, which insures about half of the country’s population, reported that 279,300 reports of vaccine side effects were not received by the Ministry of Health.
Leumit Health Services reported no adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination until May 2022, because the Ministry of Health never contacted the organization to set up access to its system, the comptroller said.
Maccabi Health Services passed approximately 3,000 reports in December 2021 but the ministry did not receive them. Health officials asked Maccabi to re-send the reports in a corrected form but Maccabi did not do so and the ministry “did not demand to receive them,” Mr. Englman said.
In a previously leaked video, experts commissioned by the Ministry of Health said in a private meeting that the organizations were “keep[ing] the information close to their chest,” making analysis of the reports difficult.
Of the 55,000 reports, most centered on minor symptoms such as colds but some conveyed serious issues such as menstrual disorders. While the authorities investigated reports of heart inflammation—Israel was the first country in the world to investigate post-vaccination myocarditis—they did not investigate some of the other reported serious issues, such as menstrual irregularities, the comptroller said.
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