Covid vaccine side effects could sideline healthcare workers amid increase in cases

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Side effects from the Covid-19 vaccine, which range from fever and chills to headaches and joint pain, could prevent some doctors and nurses from working amid an increase in hospitalizations nationwide.

Health systems are turning Until immunize key hospital staff with Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc.’s coronavirus vaccines, which could start shipping to the United States in a few weeks, pending emergency use approvals.

Earlier this week, Federal Councilors recommended that U.S. health workers be vaccinated first, as well as residents of long-term care facilities. For hospitals, this could pose significant scheduling issues at a time when many are filling up. More than 100,000 Americans were hospitalized with the virus on Wednesday, according to data from the Covid Tracking Project.

Providers will need to pull medical staff from the patient’s bedside to the immunization clinic to receive their vaccines. And if side effects do occur, they could lose key workers for a few days. To overcome this problem, some hospitals are planning to stagger staff to keep units covered. Others plan to shoot workers at the end of their shift, before they have a few days off.

Still, it’s hard to know what to expect without seeing full data from major clinical trials from Pfizer and Moderna, said Paul Biddinger, Vice President of Emergency Preparedness Massachusetts General Hospital.

“It’s a little easier to model how we should schedule employee vaccinations when we know how often [side effects] occur and with what severity, ”Biddinger said. Plans could change when more robust data becomes available, he added.

While pharmaceutical companies have yet to release the full results of their largest trials, disclosures of earlier tests in recent press releases give some idea of ​​their safety profiles.

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE said on Nov. 18 that no serious safety issues were seen in their late stage trial. Of the participants who received the two-dose vaccination schedule, 3.8% experienced fatigue and 2% had a headache. Older adults reported fewer and milder adverse events. In a previous test, companies identified cases of mild to moderate fever.

Moderna, meanwhile, said on November 16 that he also had not identified any serious safety issues in his late stage trial. Mild to moderate side effects included fatigue (9.7%), muscle or joint pain (5.2%), headache (4.5%), and injection site pain (2.7%) . Side effects were more common after the second dose of the two-dose vaccine.

“We were very reassured not to have seen any cases of things we would not expect,” said Buddy Creech, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program, who is leading the Covid-19 vaccine trials. “We are seeing side effect profiles common to other vaccines we use.”

Small proportion

Only a small proportion of those who receive coronavirus vaccines will experience side effects, according to Creech, who also serves as a principal investigator for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson Phase 3 clinical trials.

Remember, “It’s not 100% of people who have fever and chills,” Creech said Thursday during a media panel hosted by the Infectious Disease Society of America, of which he is a member.

However, the potential for side effects strong enough to put health workers out of service should be discussed before the vaccination campaign begins, Creech said.

Read more: Hospitals rush to prioritize vaccines for healthcare workers

If the possibility is not communicated effectively, he added, hospitals could be understaffed. At the same time, medical workers must also learn to distinguish between vaccine side effects and symptoms of Covid-19, given that they are highly exposed to the virus.

“We’ll have to be somewhat strategic about who is offered the vaccine, so we are working with clinical leaders in these areas to make sure they allocate their health workforce,” said Jeanmarie Mayer, Head of Infection Prevention at University of Utah Health said at a press conference Thursday.

End of shift

Based in Utah Intermountain Health care is a system that can vaccinate workers at the end of their shift before they have a few days off, said Kristin Dascomb, Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Employee Health.

“When you have your weekend off, you might have the opportunity to have symptoms, no matter how mild, so you don’t miss work when we are stressing caregivers right now,” Dascomb said. during the press conference.

Hospitals typically plan to prioritize staff who work directly with coronavirus patients, as they are at the greatest risk of contracting the disease on the job.

Mass General’s Biddinger fears that healthcare workers with unexpected symptoms will panic and think the injections are flawed, sowing further suspicion among an already skeptical public.

“We try to be very honest about what people should expect when they get the vaccine, but to remind them that it is a good thing and that it actually means that the vaccination helps us be more immune, ”he said.