Finland, Sweden and Denmark announced this week that they will temporarily stop using the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine due to a rare cardiovascular side effect, per Reuters.
- Specifically, the countries received reports of heart issues in younger males.
- Sweden has paused the use for those born 1991 and later. Finland will do the same.
- For Denmark, anyone under 18 years old cannot get the Moderna coronavirus vaccine anymore.
Per Politico, there have been a number of data points recently to suggest an increase in myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, which is inflammation of the pericardium, for those who received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
- “The connection is especially clear when it comes to Moderna’s vaccine Spikevax, especially after the second dose,” Sweden’s health agency said in a statement.
- However, Sweden’s agency said, “the risk of being affected is very small.”
For months, there have been questions about whether or not the coronavirus vaccine can cause inflammation of the heart muscle. Some reports suggested myocarditis could be a side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine, as the Deseret News reported.
Federal health officials — including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — are now investigating whether the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine can cause myocarditis because there was data to suggest the vaccine “may carry a higher risk” for young people, The Washington Post reports.
- The officials will review if the Moderna vaccine is linked “with a higher risk of a heart condition called myocarditis in younger adults than previously believed,” according to The Washington Post.
But Israel’s Health Ministry said in June that it noticed a small number of heart inflammation cases in younger men who got the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, as I wrote for the Deseret News.