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The list of health conditions is not newly released; it’s from a 2021 Pfizer report submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.
The list shows adverse events, not side effects, following COVID-19 vaccination in the first three months after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized in December 2020.
Adverse events are any health incidents reported following vaccination and do not mean that the vaccine caused the incident. Side effects are incidents caused by the vaccine.
More than four years after pharmaceutical companies rolled out the first COVID-19 vaccines, some social media users are still sharing misleading information about them.
"Pfizer just released its list of side effects of its COVID-19 vaccine," multiple Facebook posts said Jan. 26 and 27. The posts included a purported list of 46 Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine side effects, including cardiac arrest and neonatal death.
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)
A search of Google for reports of Pfizer publishing a new list of vaccine-related side effects yielded only fact-checks and no credible news stories of such a list.
Fact-checks by Reuters and Science Feedback said the list of supposed side effects originates from a 2021 Pfizer document that was made public in 2022. We compared the two lists and found they included all but one of the same health conditions.
Pfizer submitted the document in 2021 to the Food and Drug Administration. It listed adverse events reported in the first three months after the Pfizer-BioNTech was authorized in December 2020 for emergency use. These adverse events are different from side effects; adverse events can occur following vaccination, but are not caused by vaccination. It’s a side effect when a vaccine complicates someone’s health.
The 2021 document includes a disclaimer that says the adverse event report "does not necessarily indicate that a particular AE (adverse event) was caused by the drug; rather, the event may be due to an underlying disease or some other factor(s)."
The adverse events in the report came from several international vaccine safety databases, including the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). PolitiFact previously found VAERS data does not show whether COVID-19 vaccination caused the health complications in the self-reported data.
When asked whether Pfizer had released a new list of vaccine side effects, a company spokesperson pointed us to a webpage posted Oct. 1, 2024, for the Comirnaty Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, an updated vaccine that targets new COVID-19 variants. The only side effects listed both on that website and the social media posts were an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, inflammatory issues that affect the heart.
Studies have found COVID-19 vaccines to be safe and effective. A global study by The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, estimated that COVID-19 vaccines prevented nearly 20 million deaths worldwide in the first year of vaccination.
We rate the claim that Pfizer just released its list of side effects of its COVID-19 vaccine False.
Facebook post (archived), Jan. 27, 2025
Facebook post (archived), Jan. 26, 2025
Facebook post (archived), Jan. 27, 2025
Reuters, Fact Check: Pages of suspected side effects released about Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine ‘may not have any casual relationship’ to the jab, company says, March 17, 2022
Science Feedback, Pfizer didn’t release a list of COVID-19 vaccine side effects in 2025, contrary to allegations on social media, Jan. 10, 2025
Email correspondence, Pfizer Media Relations spokesperson, Jan. 29, 2025
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA Approves and Authorizes Updated mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines to Better Protect Against Currently Circulating Variants, Aug. 22, 2024
Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-authorization Adverse Event Reports, accessed Jan. 28, 2025
CNN, FDA issues emergency use authorization for Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, Dec. 12, 2020
Association of Health Care Journalists, Adverse event vs. side effect, accessed Jan. 28, 2025
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, About the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), accessed Jan. 28, 2025
PolitiFact, COVID-19 vaccination safety data mischaracterized, April 17, 2024
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Fact sheet for healthcare providers administering vaccine: Emergency use authorization of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (2024-2025 formula), for 6 months through 11 years of age, accessed Jan. 28, 2025
Wiley Online Library, Safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines: A systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled and randomized clinical trials, Dec. 29, 2023
Cochrane Library, Efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, Dec. 7, 2022
The Lancet, Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study, June 23, 2022
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