GOP Senator Asks RFK Jr. to Release Records on Child Deaths Linked to COVID Vaccination

Health officials have not made public documents or data supporting their recently disclosed findings.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) speaks to reporters in Chicago, Ill., on Aug 19, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Dec. 17 called for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to release records that support conclusions that a top health official recently made on child deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations.

Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, wrote in a November memorandum obtained by The Epoch Times that an FDA investigation of reported child deaths resulted in the conclusion that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination.”

Neither the FDA nor the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the FDA’s parent agency, has made public any records regarding that conclusion.

“I write to request that HHS immediately produce records and information related to the claims in Dr. Prasad’s memo,” Johnson, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in Wednesday’s letter to Kennedy. Johnson said he wants those and other documents by Jan. 6, 2026.

He later added: “Although Dr. Prasad’s leaked memo did receive some limited media coverage, it did not receive anywhere near the attention it should have. As a result, the American public remains largely unaware of what should be a blockbuster revelation. Hopefully, the documents HHS will provide in response to this oversight request will garner the public attention they deserve.”

HHS did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.

“We will soon release ... data confirming how the COVID-19 vaccine resulted in children’s deaths that previous leadership failed to properly investigate,” a spokesperson for the department told The Epoch Times in an email on Dec. 4.

The investigation of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA, has involved reviewing autopsy reports, officials have said.

Johnson previously received documents from HHS through subpoenas that showed health officials nearly warned people early in the pandemic not to participate in sports if they suffered from post-vaccination heart inflammation. Officials delayed warning the public about the inflammation, which has in some instances culminated in deaths, according to documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

Several COVID-19 vaccines continue to have clearance from the FDA, the CDC says people can receive them after consulting with health care professionals, and some health groups recommend the shots for many Americans.

Prasad, the head of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the recent memo that if FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary were not leading the agency, “we would not have performed this investigation and identified this safety concern.” He said: “Why were these deaths not actively reviewed in real time? Why did it take until 2025 to perform this analysis, and take necessary further actions? Deaths were reported between 2021 and 2024, and ignored for years.”

Makary said during an appearance on Bloomberg TV this week that “the moral dilemma when we came into office is that under the Biden administration, there were cases reported to the FDA, and the question is, should they be public information or not?” He added, “so we believe they should, but we wanted to make sure that, in fact, there was truly a link between the COVID shot and the death before we make it public.”

Doctors who led the FDA during the previous administration said in an opinion piece in response to Prasad’s memo that all reported deaths following COVID-19 vaccination “had been carefully reviewed by FDA staff, who drew different conclusions.” They said, “the memo offered no explanation of the process and analyses that were used to reach the new retrospective judgment,” and criticized an updated framework for vaccine regulation that Prasad outlined.