On September 22, 2020 the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccine Planning Unit (VPU) presented their plan, once the vaccines rolled out, to conduct active “enhanced safety monitoring for COVID-19 vaccines in early phase vaccination” through smartphone and email-based web surveys, in addition to VAERS.
The CDC introduced the Vaccine Safety Assessment For Essential workers (V-SAFE) phone app at vaccine roll-out, initially intended for health workers, though was made available to the general public to download and register. For the first week participants would get prompted to enter post vaccination information, then weekly up to [only] 6 weeks – this is called active surveillance. [2]
The purpose of the V-SAFE app “is to rapidly characterize the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines when given outside a clinical trial setting.” Data submitted to V-SAFE is “collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” a private, third-party computer technology company who receives the data in deidentified form. [3]
The US Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is “the US early warning safety monitoring system”, co-managed by the CDC and FDA, with an established baseline yearly reporting rate. [1] The management of vaccine safety has historical issues!
By December 2021 the CDC refuse, through FOIA, to release the deidentified V-SAFE data to the public which Oracle is allowed to manage!