The NSCJF received details today on a newly released freedom of information request (2021-01860-HEA) to the Government of Nova Scotia. It was regarding serious adverse events post COVID vaccination in 12-19 year olds up until October 7, 2021. The results are alarming, let's walk through them.
A serious adverse event is defined by NS Public Health as an event that requires hospitalization or results in permanent disability or death. There have been 17 such events in NS for the 12-19 age group, up to October 7. Using data from Statistics Canada, there are approximately 78000 children in NS aged 12-19. Using data from the NS COVID dashboard, at the time of this article, roughly 66000 Nova Scotians in the 12-19 age group have been vaccinated. 17 serious adverse events (up to October 7) out of 66000 (up to today) is a rate of under 1:3900. That is an alarming rate by any measure of vaccine safety.
If the 12-19 age group follows a similar pattern to the overall NS population, that means there are about 5x as many less serious adverse events as there are serious events. The overall population in NS has had 83 serious events and 400 less serious events up to August 22, 2021 as per FOIPOP request 2021-01590-HEA. This would mean the rate of less serious events could be around 1:800 for the 12-19 age group. The rate of ANY adverse event happening is about 1:666 (perhaps fittingly). These figures mean the 12-19 age group are at more than double the risk from injury from the vaccines as the population at large, yet are at the least risk from COVID itself.
If the way these figures trend with age continue to hold true, it's a horrific thought to see what these results may look like for the 5-11 age group once they are approved to receive Pfizer, which will be any week now.
At this time, we don't have information for NS regarding COVID hospitalizations by age. However, Canada wide data is available. For those under 19 since last March, the incidence rate of COVID hospitalization is 0.5% of PCR confirmed cases (1899 hospitalizations from 359000 confirmed cases). As of today, there have been 726 confirmed cases in the 12-19 age group in NS since March 2020. Using the nationwide incidence rate of 0.5%, that would mean in 19 months there have been 3-4 hospitalizations in NS, compared to 17 serious adverse events from the vaccines in 5 months.