For vaccine opponents, the reports from Wednesday evening were sure to be a hit.

The EU Medicines Agency EMA announced in the regularly published bulletin of its Pharmacovigilance Committee (PRAC) that it was checking whether certain symptoms that occurred in a few cases after Covid vaccinations with mRNA vaccines should be classified as side effects.

The markets reacted immediately: The shares of the companies concerned BioNTech and Moderna fell significantly on the Nasdaq on Wednesday evening, the Mainz biotech company by 13.8 percent, the American manufacturer even by 15.8 percent.

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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On Thursday, the BioNTech course in Frankfurt quickly recovered to around 320 euros over the course of the day - and was thus at the level of a week ago.

This suggests that the price correction is largely due to profit-taking, after all, the company's value has practically doubled within a month.

Isolated cases of kidney disease and an allergic skin reaction

But does the EMA report actually allow the serious conclusion that the two vaccines are more dangerous than previously known? Of course, as always, an unequivocal answer is not possible until the authority has finally completed its ongoing review. But what the EMA is now reporting is exactly that: a routine examination, as the agency always carries out after a preliminary approval of a vaccine. The PRAC, made up of experts from the EMA and the national authorities, discusses the results of the ongoing investigations twice a month. For all four vaccines previously approved in the EU - including those from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson - the EMA regularly publishes a so-called "Safety Update".

For BioNTech and Moderna alike, the crucial sentence of Wednesday's bulletins is: “No changes to the product information are currently recommended.” In other words, there is no reason to warn of specific side effects on the package insert that are associated with the known side effects of vaccinations such as fever, fatigue, or headache. In the spring, the EMA recommended an indication of the risk of extremely rare cerebral vein thrombosis for the AZ vaccine, while the FDA warns of a slightly higher incidence of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a nerve inflammation, for the J&J vaccine.

The EMA is currently reviewing reports of cerebral vein thrombosis after J&J vaccination and is also investigating the occurrence of GBS cases after AZ vaccinations.

The J&J and AZ vaccines are both similarly constructed vector vaccines.

For both active ingredients, the EMA continues to expressly take the view that their benefits far outweigh the risks.

330 million BioNTech cans inoculated

There are no relevant warnings for the mRNA active ingredients from BioNTech and Moderna either on this or the other side of the Atlantic.

The EMA is now examining whether reports of very isolated cases of two types of kidney disease and an allergic skin reaction in connection with mRNA vaccinations can be directly traced back to the vaccinations and therefore also require a note in the package insert.

BioNTech has inoculated around 330 million doses since the vaccine was approved on December 21, 2020. Since then, around 240,000 cases of possible side effects have been reported to the EMA - mainly via the national authorities. Most of these are mild, and it is not certain whether they are really causally related to the vaccine.

A BioNTech spokeswoman said Thursday the company is taking "adverse events" very seriously that may be related to the vaccine. "We closely monitor such events and collect relevant information that we share with regulatory agencies around the world." The data and analysis submitted by BioNTech will help determine whether there is a link between the vaccine and a small number of the symptoms described.