Skip to content

Saturday, Jun. 26, 2021

Have cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome been found in people shortly after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine?

Lisa Freedland, Gigafact
yes

Rare cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome have been observed in people from 10 to 22 days after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

A U.K. study found four cases. A report from India found seven. Facial weakness was a common symptom in these patients, despite typically arising in less than 20% of GBS cases.

With GBS, immune system damage results in muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis, often after a viral or bacterial infection. In 1976, a swine flu vaccine was confirmed to have increased risk of the disorder.

The AstraZeneca shot is not approved in the U.S. The U.S. alert system has received 279 reports of GBS following COVID-19 vaccinations: 59 after a Johnson & Johnson shot, 97 after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot and 121 after the Moderna shot.

A causal link has not been confirmed; some or all cases could be coincidences. U.S. authorities continue to recommend all the approved vaccines.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.