SRA International, Inc., www.sra.com was awarded a contract for $18 million to support the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) https://vaers.hhs.gov/index co-sponsored by CDC and FDA.
VAERS is a national vaccine safety surveillance program that collects reports from vaccine manufacturers, providers, and recipients about possible side effects, or reports on adverse events occurring after vaccines licensed for use in the U.S. are administered.
VAERS searches reports to detect new, unusual, or rare vaccine adverse events, monitors increases in known adverse events, identifies potential patient risk factors for particular types of adverse events, identifies vaccine lots with increased numbers or types of reported adverse events, and assesses the safety of newly licensed vaccines.
VAERS receives around 30,000 reports annually with 13 percent classified as serious. Many different types of adverse events can occur after vaccination where 85 to 90 percent of the reports describe mild adverse events while the remaining reports reflecting serious events.
These events may involve life-threatening conditions which may require hospitalizations, permanently disabling individuals, or even events where people die. However, all of these adverse events may or may not have been caused by an individual receiving a vaccine.
The SRA contract includes a base year plus four option years if all options are exercised. Under the contract SRA will provide maintenance, data processing and management, medical coding, clinical research, information technology, and provide outreach to the public, vaccine manufacturers, and immunization programs.