Last Updated on September 9, 2024 by Nivedita
Quick Take
A social media post shares a screenshot of an article published on a media website that claims every 1 in 500 children who received the Pfizer vaccine are hospitalized by it. We fact-checked and found the claim to be Half True.
The Claim
An Instagram post shares a screenshot of an article titled ‘One in Every 500 Small Children Who Receive the Pfizer Vaccine are Hospitalised By It’. The post has received 487 likes till we last checked.
Fact Check
Does every 1 in 500 children who received the Pfizer vaccine are hospitalized by it?
Not enough evidence. The claim made by the article published on a media website named The Daily Sceptic is based on recent research published in 2022. This research was published in the journal named JAMA Network and compared the safety of the Pfizer covid vaccine with other approved vaccines in children younger than five years.
The research concluded that only ten out of 7,800 children who participated in the study were hospitalized due to severe symptoms. These children received three micrograms dose of the Pizer vaccine. So, symptoms requiring hospitalization were reported only in the cases who received a dosage above 3 micrograms. Also, no children who received less than 3 micrograms of vaccine were hospitalized.
One of the social media posts stated about teenage cardiovascular negative impacts as caused by Covid vaccine.
It seems the result of this research is concerning for a small number of children because kids under the age of five who are not the participants of the study were not given the dosage that resulted in hospitalization. A press release uploaded on the Pfizer website confirms that 3 micrograms dose of the vaccine was carefully selected after studying safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity in children under five years of age.