vitals

Official Canada Vital (Deaths) Statistics, analyzed using Data Science

This project is maintained by open-canada

Reporting COVID-19 vaccines side effects

Background

Reporting of serious (or life threatening) side effects of vaccines is mandatory in Canada. However, reporting of non-serious (or not life threatening) side effects in Canada is voluntary. Many doctors may not have time to do it, nor they provide guidance to their patients on how they can do it.

For this reason many non-serious side effects remain unreported. Many doctors will not do it, and consumers do not know how to do it. In fact, many Canadians may not even know that they can do report vaccine side-effect themselves, i.e. without a medical doctor. There are no instructions on the Health Canada portal on how to do it. The link to the Health Canada Voluntary Side Effect Reporting portal may also be rather difficult to find.

This page is created to address this gap and to help Canadians to report any vaccine (or any drug) side-effect, as a consumer. Health Canada encourages everyone to do so. – It is thanks to such efforts that vaccines (and drugs) can be improved for the benefits of all.

Once you know how to do it, it should not take more than fifteen minutes to do it. This is how you do it. An Example is provided here.

Submitting Voluntary Side Effect Report via Health Canada portal

Step 1: Go to the Health Canada Voluntary Side Effect Reporting portal : https://hpr-rps.hres.ca/side-effects-reporting-form.php?form=voluntary

Step 2: Submit electronic form there as shown in this Example.

Step 3: A few (2-5) days later you should receive email from Canada Vigilance (HC/SC) canadavigilance@hc-sc.gc.ca (with Subject: “Correspondence from the Marketed Health Products Directorate - Adverse Reaction Number 0009xxxxx), which will provide you with the
Adverse Reaction Report (AER) number and which will ask you to submit additional details though their portal.

If you don’t receive email from them within 5 business days, please check you Spam folder and, if it is not there, please call them at Tel. 866-234-2345 and leave a message.

As they note in their email: “Posting of reports in the online database remains 3 months behind the date of reporting. This delay accounts for the necessary activities involved in report processing”

Additional resources:

The following additional resources are provided to help you prepare your side-effect report. There you can check if your symptoms are already reported in national adverse event reporting systems, and if so, how common they are, for which type of vaccine, and which vaccine batch (a.k.a. lot, which is the number printed on your vaccination receipt)

The authoritative source for COVID-19 information is Canada.ca/coronavirus.