Second Alaska health worker has severe reaction to COVID-19 vaccine

JUNEAU, Alaska – Health officials in Alaska have reported that a second health care worker had an adverse reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine.

Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau says the two workers experienced side effects about 10 minutes after receiving the vaccine and were treated.

One received the vaccine on Tuesday and will remain in the hospital for another night for observation while the other, vaccinated on Wednesday, has made a full recovery.

US health officials have warned doctors to be on the lookout for rare allergic reactions when the first vaccine is launched, manufactured by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

In the United States, vaccines are supposed to hang around after the injection in case any signs of allergy appear and they need immediate treatment – exactly what happened when the health worker in Juneau .

The CDC said it was aware of the incident.

“Anaphylaxis is a rare event after vaccination and the CDC is evaluating the case,” the CDC said in a statement. “The CDC and public health experts braced for a side effect like this after reports of anaphylaxis were made in England. Appropriate medical treatment for severe allergic reactions must be immediately available in the event of a reaction. anaphylactic, the CDC said.

Britain had reported a few similar allergic reactions a week earlier.

Allergies are always an issue 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 within the next year. Never before have so many vaccines made in different ways converged at the same time – and it is possible that one injection option has different side effects than another.

Getting the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or the Moderna version may cause temporary discomfort, as many vaccines do.

In addition to arm pain, people may experience fever and flu-like symptoms – fatigue, body aches, chills, headache. They last for about a day, sometimes severe enough that recipients are absent from work, and are more common after the second dose and in younger people.

These reactions are a sign that the immune system is speeding up. COVID-19 vaccines tend to cause more of these reactions than a flu shot, about how people feel with the shingles vaccination.