Health officials emphasize vaccine is safe for adolescents

Top administration health officials joined with a host of groups representing physicians, hospitals, nurses and others to endorse the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents.

The joint statement from more than a dozen federal and professional groups on Wednesday followed a meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel regarding reports of heart inflammation in young adults after use of either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Their statement: “The facts are clear: This is an extremely rare side effect, and only an exceedingly small number of people will experience it after vaccination. Importantly, for the young people who do, most cases are mild, and individuals recover often on their own or with minimal treatment,” the groups said.

Officials are tracking about 1,200 initial reports of the rare heart inflammation following doses of mRNA coronavirus vaccines, including about 480 who were younger than age 30.

There have been more than 300 million vaccine doses administered to date.