Health officials on alert for unexpected side effects as COVID vaccinations roll out

Alaska health worker has allergic reaction

As COVID-19 vaccinations roll out to more and more people, health authorities are keeping close watch for any unexpected side effects.

On Tuesday, a health worker in Alaska suffered a severe allergic reaction after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Doctors already knew to be on the lookout after Britain reported two similar cases last week.

In the U.S., vaccine recipients are supposed to hang around after the injection in case signs of an allergy appear and they need immediate treatment — exactly what happened when the health worker in Juneau became flushed and short of breath 10 minutes after the shot.

Allergies are always a question with a new medical product, but monitoring COVID-19 vaccines for any other, unexpected side effects is a bigger challenge than usual.

It’s not just because so many people need to be vaccinated over the next year. Never before have so many vaccines made in different ways converged at the same time — and it’s possible that one shot option will come with different side effects than another.

The first vaccine beginning widespread use in the U.S. and many Western countries, made by Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s Biontech, and a second option expected soon from competitor Moderna Inc. are made the same way. The Food and Drug Administration reports huge studies of each have uncovered no major safety risks.

But the allergy concern “points out again the importance of real-time safety monitoring,” said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief. And authorities have multiple ways of tracking how people fare as these COVID-19 vaccines get into more arms.

Getting either the Pfizer-biontech shot or the Moderna version can cause some temporary discomfort.

With a sore arm, people can experience a fever and some flu-like symptoms: fatigue, aches, chills, headache. They last about a day, sometimes bad enough that recipients miss work and are more common after the second dose and in younger people.

The reactions are a sign that the immune system is revving up.

COVID-19 vaccines tend to cause more of those reactions than a flu shot, about what people experience with shingles vaccinations. But some are similar to early coronavirus symptoms, one reason hospitals are staggering when their employees get vaccinated.

The FDA found no serious side effects in the tens of thousands enrolled in studies of the two vaccines.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises people to stick around for 15 minutes after vaccination, and those with a history of other allergies for 30 minutes, so they can be treated immediately if they have a reaction.