It was the first death in South Africa that has been causally linked to a Covid-19 vaccine, of which more than 38 million doses have been administered in the country.
The benefits of vaccines still far outweigh the risks, experts say following a recently reported death in South Africa linked to Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine.
According to Sahpra, GBS is a rare condition affecting the body’s immune system. Symptoms of GBS can vary from mild to severe, and include muscle weakness, muscle pain, numbness and tingling. In many cases, GBS gets better with no serious after-effects but in some cases, GBS can become serious and cause paralysis and other serious or life-threatening problems.
Sahpra works closely with both the National Department of Health and Nisec to ensure that all reported severe adverse events are first investigated by the provinces and thereafter assessed for causality by Nisec. Causality assessment of the reported case was conducted by Nisec using the World Health Organization methodology, which is a systematic step-wise process.
“In this case, no other cause of the GBS could be identified at the time of the illness. Following this, the vaccine administration process and storage conditions are considered to rule out any programmatic errors that could have caused a particular event,” she said. He says, for example, “Risks that are common or familiar are more acceptable to people than risks that are uncommon or unknown.
“It is possible that GBS may be triggered by as-yet-unidentified viral infections. It’s one of those horrible diseases where we don’t fully understand the underlying causal mechanisms, but we know there are viral infections that are associated with it.
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