what is vaccine shedding

Vaccine shedding is a term used to describe the release or shedding of components of a vaccine either inside or outside of the body. Shedding can occur following a viral infection caused by an attenuated or "live virus" vaccine, which is a specific vaccine technology that uses an attenuated virus. Shedding is only possible with an attenuated vaccine and is impossible with other vaccine technologies such as inactivated vaccine, viral vector vaccine, RNA vaccines, or subunit vaccines. Shedding is highly unlikely to be harmful to most healthy people, but it may pose a risk to immunocompromised people. However, COVID-19 vaccines cannot cause shedding since none of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use by the FDA or the World Health Organization as of December 2021 are live-virus vaccines. The specific use of the term "vaccine shedding" has risen to public prominence through anti-vaccine activists linked to misinformation related to COVID-19, who erroneously claim that COVID-19 vaccination can cause individuals to shed coronavirus spike protein and affect menstruation and fertility in women exposed to them. However, the spike protein generated by vaccination does not shed, and there is no evidence to suggest that these vaccines cause menstruation and fertility problems.