2 health workers had allergic reactions to COVID vaccine and urge others to get vaccinated

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Person in UK receives COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer

While tens of thousands of healthcare workers and nursing home residents were vaccinated with the newly approved Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine this week, two medical workers in Alaska had allergic reactions to the shooting.

The two staff, both at the same Alaskan hospital, developed allergy symptoms just minutes after being inoculated with the first dose of Pfizer vaccine. The hospital said it would not change their vaccine deployment plans, and workers have always urged others to get vaccinated.

The first reaction occurred on Tuesday in a middle-aged woman with no history of allergic reactions to drugs. Within ten minutes of receiving the vaccine at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau, she developed a rash on her face and upper body and experienced shortness of breath and a high heart rate, The New York Times reported.

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The hospital was following federal guidelines, which advise monitoring all people who receive the COVID vaccine for 15 minutes if they have no history of allergic reactions, and for 30 minutes if they do, and the worker was quickly treated with epinephrine. She stayed in the intensive care unit overnight to monitor her symptoms.

Due to her severe allergic reaction to the vaccine, she will not receive the second dose of the vaccine, which is given three weeks later to increase its effectiveness to 95%.

“She kept a very positive attitude,” said Nobel Anderson, a doctor who treated her overnight, according to the Washington post. “She was delighted to have received the first dose and was disappointed not to receive the second dose. And she encouraged us all to keep going.

The second worker who had an allergic reaction, a male staff member, had a milder reaction ten minutes after being inoculated at the same hospital. He developed eye bags, dizziness and a sore throat and was treated with adrenaline, Pepcid and Benadryl, and felt normal within an hour.

Both workers said they didn’t want people to worry about the vaccine based on their reactions – the worker “always encourages her colleagues to get vaccinated,” the hospital said in a press release, and the male worker “doesn’t want his experience negatively impacting his colleagues lining up for the vaccine.”

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Four hundred staff at Bartlett Regional Hospital have signed up for the COVID-19 vaccine and 144 have been vaccinated so far. Tens of thousands more across the United States received their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine this week, and no further allergic reactions were reported.

There were no allergic reactions in Pfizer’s clinical trials, which included more than 44,000 volunteers. In the UK, where vaccinations began last week, two health workers, both with a history of severe allergies, developed brief allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. From Wednesday, 137,897 people in the UK received their first dose of Pfizer vaccine.

After the two reactions in the UK, the US Centers for Disease Control released a guide saying that people with a history of severe vaccine reactions “can still be vaccinated, but they should be made aware of the unknown risks of developing a severe allergic reaction. “

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As vaccinations with Pfizer’s formulation continue this week, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve a second COVID-19 vaccine, from Moderna. Like Pfizer, it requires two doses and clinical trials have shown it to be around 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease.

Both vaccines come at a crucial time, with uncontrollable COVID-19 infections in the United States On Wednesday, a record 245,033 Americans tested positive for the virus, and the death toll climbed to another record 3,611 .

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