Japan Continues to Use Vaccines, Not Ivermectin, to Fight COVID-19
by Nora Macaluso · FactCheck.orgSciCheck Digest
More than 70% of Japan’s population has received the COVID-19 vaccines, and the government is moving ahead with a booster shot in December. But a conservative radio host in the U.S. falsely claimed, “Japan drops vax rollout, goes to Ivermectin.” Japan hasn’t stopped its vaccine program and hasn’t approved ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment.
How effective are the vaccines?
How effective are the vaccines?
All of the authorized and approved vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which is the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, showed a final efficacy of 91% against symptomatic illness in its phase 3 trial, meaning that under the conditions of the trial the vaccine reduced the risk of getting sick by 91%. The Moderna vaccine showed similar results in its clinical trial, with an efficacy of 94% against disease at the time of emergency use authorization.
Johnson & Johnson, which partly tested its vaccine in South Africa when the beta variant emerged, reported an efficacy of 66% in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 and an efficacy of 85% in preventing severe or critical COVID-19.
Subsequent studies have demonstrated that the vaccines are effective under real-world conditions, including against the highly contagious delta variant, although they are less effective in preventing infection and mild disease compared with earlier versions of the virus. Most studies show the vaccines remain highly effective in preventing serious disease, hospitalization and death from delta.
Data also suggest that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the coronavirus if they do become infected.
How do we know vaccines are safe?
How do we know vaccines are safe?
No vaccine or medical product is 100% safe, but the safety of vaccines is ensured via rigorous testing in clinical trials prior to authorization or approval, followed by continued safety monitoring once the vaccine is rolled out to the public to detect potential rare side effects. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration inspects vaccine production facilities and reviews manufacturing protocols to make sure vaccine doses are of high-quality and free of contaminants.
One key vaccine safety surveillance program is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, which is an early warning system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA. As its website explains, VAERS “is not designed to detect if a vaccine caused an adverse event, but it can identify unusual or unexpected patterns of reporting that might indicate possible safety problems requiring a closer look.”
Anyone can submit a report to VAERS for any health problem that occurs after an immunization. There is no screening or vetting of the report and no attempt to determine if the vaccine was responsible for the problem. The information is still valuable because it’s a way of being quickly alerted to a potential safety issue with a vaccine, which can then be followed-up by government scientists.
Another monitoring system is the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink, which uses electronic health data from nine health care organizations in the U.S. to identify adverse events related to vaccination in near real time.
In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, randomized controlled trials involving tens of thousands of people, which were reviewed by multiple groups of experts, revealed no serious safety issues and showed that the benefits outweigh the risks.
The CDC and FDA vaccine safety monitoring systems, which were expanded for the COVID-19 vaccines and also include a new smartphone-based reporting tool called v-safe, have subsequently identified only a few, very rare adverse events.
For more, see “How safe are the vaccines?”
Full Story
Japan has made progress in the fight against COVID-19, with more than 70% of the country’s population now vaccinated. Experts say that high vaccination rate, along with the widespread use of masks, is likely behind Japan’s success at getting COVID-19 rates down. Japan reported just 86 daily cases nationwide as of Nov. 1, the lowest since last June and down from more than 20,000 in mid-August.
But conservative radio host Hal Turner falsely reported on his website on Oct. 27 that Japan ended its COVID-19 vaccine program and has instead been treating cases with ivermectin, an antiparasitic medication. Turner’s headline, which was shared on social media posts, falsely claimed, “Japan drops vax rollout, goes to Ivermectin.”
The article on Turner’s website said Japan pulled the Moderna vaccine after finding metal contamination, then switched from vaccines to ivermectin. The post contains links to press reports, none of which back up the claim that the country has ended its vaccination program or switched to ivermectin. One article, from the Associated Press, quotes a virology expert as saying Japan’s success is due in part to the vaccines.
Japan has mainly relied on the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer, which require two shots, administered a few weeks apart, for full vaccination against COVID-19. In August, Japan also began using the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being administered in two shots, eight weeks apart. A Japanese health ministry panel approved a plan in October to make a booster shot available to everyone who has received two vaccine shots, eight months after the second shot.
So, rather than ending its COVID-19 vaccination program, the Japanese government has said it plans to continue providing vaccines, including the booster shot as soon as December, according to NHK World Japan.
Japan did have an issue with the manufacturing process of the Moderna vaccine. In late August, Moderna and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. suspended and later recalled three lots of the Moderna vaccine that contained about 1.6 million doses after stainless steel contaminants were found in some vials.
Takeda said the problem was caused by “incorrect assembly and was due to human error specific to visually misjudging the required 1mm gap between the star-wheel and the stopper” of machinery that put the tops on vaccine vials, according to an Oct. 1 article by Reuters. Japan continued to administer vaccine doses that were unaffected by the manufacturing issue.
Ivermectin Never Approved for Treatment
Contrary to Turner’s claim, ivermectin is not on a list of pharmaceuticals approved to treat COVID-19 in Japan.
“Ivermectin is not endorsed by the Japanese government,” Kosuke Yasukawa, who is a physician at Medstar Washington Hospital Center and an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, told us in an email.
Haruo Ozaki, chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, had recommended the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 patients at Feb. 9 press conference, “which was criticized by many physicians in the U.S.,” said Yasukawa, an infectious disease specialist who received his medical degree at Keio University in Tokyo.
Ozaki is not a government official, and the Tokyo Medical Association is a professional organization that doesn’t make policy.
“I believe basic precautions like masks [and] social distancing, along with vaccination, helped reduce infections in Japan,” Yasukawa said.
The World Health Organization said in March that evidence about the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 was “inconclusive.”
The WHO recommends that ivermectin “continue to be used for its intended purposes,” the organization said in an email to FactCheck.org. “Until more data is available, WHO recommends that the drug only be used to treat COVID-19 within clinical trials,” regardless of disease severity.
Similarly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.” (For more on ivermectin, see SciCheck’s article “Ongoing Clinical Trials Will Decide Whether (or Not) Ivermectin Is Safe, Effective for COVID-19.”)
Officials from the Japanese Embassy in Washington didn’t return emails seeking comment.
We tried to reach Hal Turner for evidence supporting his claims, but we didn’t hear back.
Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.
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