VACCINE SIDE EFFECTS
Some participants in trials had chills, aches; some felt fine
• Some trial participants get temporary aches, fever; others don’t.
With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines fast approaching, San Diegans who’ve participated in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s clinical trials have a few words of advice for the front-line health care workers and long-term care facility residents who’ll be among the first to get these vaccines.
You might feel fine after your shot, but you could also feel achy. Or feverish. Or exhausted. These are common vaccine side effects, and generally mean your immune system is kicking into gear. And while the symptoms may be a bit stronger than those of your typical f lu shot, they will pass.
“This is a far smaller inconvenience than actually getting COVID and the potential for that,” said Mira Mesa resident Amanda Roth, who participated in Pfizer’s trial.
Other people may not feel the same way. And that worries researchers convinced that a vaccine will be the key to helping end the worst pandemic the world has faced in a century. Many vaccines are made by injecting a weakened or dead version of a virus, but not the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna. They use a molecule called RNA, which gives your cells information to build a small piece of the coronavirus — the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter your cells. The protein is harmless on its own, and it gives your immune system time to learn to attack the coronavirus.
Both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are about 95 percent effective in preventing COVID-19, based on clinical trial results.
That’s far better than scientists had hoped. But these vaccines won’t work if people aren’t willing to take them. And they’ll be less effective if people get the first dose but not the second. Pfizer’s vaccine requires two doses, three weeks apart; Moderna’s shots are four
weeks apart.
Dr. Stephen Spector, who runs UC San Diego’s Moderna trial, worries that side effects could prevent some people from coming back for a booster shot, which strengthens and lengthens the immune system’s response to the coronavirus.
“I am concerned,” he said. “It’s so important that people (know) that they may have some side effects from the vaccine, but that they should be prepared to receive both doses.”
Spector says that most of the 336 San Diegans who signed up for UCSD’s Moderna vaccine study have had minimal symptoms — a bit of soreness around the injection site, or nothing at all. Since about half the volunteers got a placebo injection, that means some of those who got the actual vaccine weren’t affected much.
Others had f lu-like symptoms — fever, aches and chills — that generally went away in a couple of days.
Some participants took a day or two off work to recover from these symptoms. That has shaped how health care providers plan to roll out these vaccines.
“We’re going to look at that and likely do rolling vaccinations in areas so we don’t hit the whole workforce at once,” said Dr. Marlene Millen, one of the leaders of UCSD Health’s COVID-19 vaccine deployment team.
The Union-Tribune asked San Diegans who’ve taken part in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials about any side effects they had.
The bottom line: Everyone’s experience was a bit different.
Roth, for example, felt fine after the first injection. But she had chills after the second shot and tucked into bed early. The next morning, her arm felt sore, which lasted several more days.
Solana Beach resident Michael Denisevich had the opposite experience: a strong reaction to the first shot, but nothing after the second. The first shot of Pfizer’s vaccine left him a bit feverish, tired and with swollen lymph nodes in his neck. Then his right arm, where he’d been injected, started to feel sore.
“I couldn’t even pick up a cup of coffee,” Denisevich said.
The pain was mostly gone about a day later. He says it wasn’t nearly as bad as when he got the Shingrix shingles vaccine, which left him feeling like he’d been knocked over by a bus.
Not everyone minded their side effects. Ginny Ollis of Mission Hills usually only sleeps five hours a night. But after getting a shot as part of Moderna’s vaccine trial, she spent most of the next couple of days in deep slumber.
“If I’m going to have a repercussion, that’s a good one.”
Because trial participants aren’t told whether they received the vaccine or placebo, it’s possible some of these volunteers received the placebo.