California Resumes COVID-19 Vaccinations

The state of California’s Epidemiologist, Dr. Erica Pan, stated on January 20, 2021, ‘vaccination providers could resume the administration of lot 41L20A of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.’

Vaccinations with this ‘lot’ were paused on January 17, 2021, due to possible allergic reactions reported in San Diego, California, on January 12th and 13th.

"Our highest priorities are to ensure that vaccines are safe and effective, and distributed equitably and efficiently," said Dr. Pan. “We convened the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup and additional allergy and immunology specialists to examine the evidence collected.”

Based on a lengthy discussion of the clinical findings among the seven vaccine recipients (all of whom received treatment and recovered), aided by the three guest experts in allergy and immunology, it was concluded that while one or more of the seven individuals had angioedema, anaphylaxis was not confirmed in any of them.

None experienced a life-threatening adverse event following the administration of the Moderna vaccine.

And no reason was identified as to why these adverse events occurred at that vaccine administration site on those dates.

“We had further discussions with the County of San Diego Department of Public Health, the U.S. FDA, CDC, and the manufacturer Moderna, and found no scientific basis to continue the pause.”

"These findings should continue to give Californians confidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and that the systems put in place to ensure vaccine safety are rigorous and science-based.”

“I encourage every Californian to get the vaccine when it's their turn,” concluded Dr. Pan’s statement.

As of January 21, 2021, California has administered over 1.6 million COVID-19 vaccines.

Members of the Workgroup were joined by allergy and immunology specialists Drs. Michael Welch, John Kelso, and Stephanie Leonard; representatives of the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, including Dr. Eric McDonald, Medical Director, Epidemiology & Immunization Services, and Melissa Thun, Immunization Coordinator; and Dr. Francesca Torriani, UCSD infectious disease physician.

The experimental Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is an mRNA vaccine against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 encoding for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike protein.

On December 18, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization that enables the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine to be distributed in the USA for use in individuals 18 years of age and older.

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