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Canada now has 400 reported deaths and more than 10,000 serious injuries following people receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, but Health Canada indicates it has confidence in vaccinations to battle coronavirus variants.
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However, for families behind those numbers, it’s not about statistics.
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“Evidence indicates that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines continue to outweigh the risks of the disease,” Health Canada states in its new adverse reaction update. “Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the provinces and territories, and manufacturers continue to closely monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.”
“We’ll respond to any safety issues right away and will inform Canadians about any risks that arise in Canada.”
But Dan Hartman, father of 17-year-old Ontario hockey player Sean Hartman who died 33 days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine after being assessed in hospital for a rash, sore shoulder and rings around his eyes, said he’s hopeful the new numbers encourage governments to drill down on ensuring vaccine safety.
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“The signal has not been found in other vaccine safety monitoring systems in the USA nor in other countries, including Canada. Health Canada and PHAC will continue to monitor this issue closely.”
Canadians can also keep track on the Government of Canada website at health-infobase.canada.ca, which was updated on Friday. The up-to-date numbers show against the 95,565,309 vaccines administered, 53,064 adverse reactions have been reported, of which 10,519 are considered “serious.”
Health Canada warns “though these (400) deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine.”
While these numbers represent what has been reported, the numbers indicate a low chance statistically of suffering serious injury or death.
But this is a hard sell to a parent.
Hartman said his son Sean’s autopsy determined the cause of his Sept. 27, 2021 death as “unascertained,” which means he can’t say his son died from the vaccine but others can’t say he didn’t.
When he read the government’s latest numbers, his first thought was, “Is my boy counted as one of these 400?”
Hartman also said he “appreciates (Twitter owner) Elon Musk’s recent tweets about he and his relative’s adverse reaction, which allows more people to openly talk about.”
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He urged “government, medical experts and citizens to remember, for grieving families there are no statistics but just pain and unanswered questions.”
Now that Health Canada “has been transparent with this new report showing 400 deaths and more than 10,000 seriously injured people,” Hartman wants the focus to shift from saying “the number is low and tolerable to the number is significant and we don’t want to add to it.”
Health Canada said its next update will be Feb. 17th.