The MHRA Papers - Part 8

Facilitating Bell’s palsy and vaccination in pregnancy with wrong or non-existent data

SUMMARY: The EWG reaches conclusions on incomplete or no data. But it was all secret anyway.

We continue our review of the minutes of the meeting of the MHRA’s ​​Commission On Human Medicines (CHM) COVID-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group, which took place on 22 December 2020

This was the day after the EMA met and gave conditional market authorisations to PfizerBioNTech’s Comirnaty vaccine.

The first topic discussed by the EWG was the risk of anaphylactic reaction after exposure to BNT162b2.

There appeared to be a lot of roundabouts and circumlocutions, and here is some of the text:

“The EWG heard about two cases of anaphylaxis reaction on the first day of the UK vaccination campaign. 

The EWG recalled that polyethylene glycol (PEG) was previously considered a potential causative agent of the two allergic reactions seen in the vaccination campaign”.

However, we do not really know much about exposure to PEG in humans, so with a lot of warnings, the discussions petered out with a fi…