CDC warned COVID vaccine reports were overwhelming system before giving safety reassurance
November 9, 2026
Summarised by Centrist
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was warned that reports of health problems following COVID-19 vaccination were overwhelming its processing capacity, weeks before publicly declaring that early vaccine safety monitoring was reassuring.
A January 15, 2021 memo from General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), contracted to help manage the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), said incoming reports had “significantly exceeded the estimated maximum of 1,000 reports per day”.
“As a result, GDIT is unable to meet processing and other timeframes,” the contractor warned, referring to data processing and clinical inquiries.
Records released under freedom-of-information requests also showed 19,046 incoming reports during December alone.
Yet on February 19, the CDC published its first vaccine safety assessment, declaring that monitoring indicated “reassuring safety profiles for COVID-19 vaccines”.
The assessment covered December 14 to January 13 and examined 6,994 reports that had been received and processed. Of those, 640, or 9.2%, were classified as serious, including 113 reported deaths.
The CDC said available evidence did not suggest a causal relationship between vaccination and those deaths.
Writing for the Brownstone Institute, Jeffrey Tucker argues that the CDC's reassurances failed to adequately acknowledge the scale of the reporting backlog and the potential limitations of analysing only processed reports.
The contractor's difficulties persisted. By March, GDIT was recruiting additional staff and expanding its operations to address tens of thousands of outstanding reports.
VAERS collects reports of medical events following vaccination, whether or not the vaccine caused them. The figures therefore cannot establish how many people were injured by vaccination.
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