Admission undercuts advice in widely seen video.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged there is no data supporting the co-administration of vaccines for mpox, COVID-19, and influenza, in contradiction of advice a top agency official gave to the public.
“There are no data on administering JYNNEOS vaccine at the same time as other vaccines,” the CDC said.
The acknowledgment was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by attorneys for the nonprofit Informed Consent Action Network, which regularly challenges health agencies to back up claims with hard data.
The nonprofit lodged the request because of a video released by the CDC.
It’s not too late to get vaccinated. You can get the #mpox vaccine at the same time as your #flu and #COVID vaccines. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis encourages you to talk to your vaccinator about what is right for you.https://t.co/1vd9W6Usan pic.twitter.com/GPSnNFBOqZ
— CDC (@CDCgov) January 20, 2023
In the video, a narrator says, “Can I get my mpox vaccine at the same time as my flu shot and COVID vaccines?”
“The short answer is yes,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, acting director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in the video.
Neither the CDC nor Dr. Daskalakis referenced any studies or other data.
The video has been viewed nearly 3 million times.
The CDC official did say that people with heart disease or deemed at risk of heart disease might want to consider receiving a COVID-19 shot at a different time than an mpox vaccine dose “because of a possible risk of heart inflammation associated with some COVID and mpox vaccines.”
Myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, is caused by all available COVID-19 vaccines in the United States, U.S. authorities have said.
Cardiac events of special interest occurred in a higher proportion of recipients of the JYNNEOS mpox vaccine when compared to placebo recipients in a clinical trial, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says in the vaccine’s package insert. Six cases among the vaccinated were judged to be caused by the vaccine, though none were myocarditis.
Multiple cases of myocarditis were reported after JYNNEOS vaccination to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is co-run by the CDC and the FDA, the CDC reported previously. “Current data do not suggest an increased risk for myocarditis after receipt of JYNNEOS, but the possibility of a small risk cannot be excluded,” the CDC said in a paper describing the reports.
By Zachary Stieber
