COVID-19 vaccines: What you need to know about side effects and risks
by Cassidy Morrison, Healthcare Reporter |
| February 08, 2021 06:37 AM
More than 40 million doses of either the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States, mostly to seniors and healthcare workers, since the rollout began in mid-December.
With the growing number of immunizations comes a clearer picture of the negative side effects associated with the shots.
Here are your questions, answered:
Q: Are the vaccines safe?
A: The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the only ones authorized for public use in the U.S., appear to have the same types of adverse effects, called risk patterns, as those of other shots, such as, for example, the meningitis B and shingles vaccines.
“In terms of trying to put it in context and say, these vaccines have similar risk patterns to other vaccines that have been used for a while, I think that’s a fair assessment,†said Dr. Archana Chatterjee, dean of the Chicago Medical School and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s panel of vaccine experts charged with reviewing clinical trial data and recommending the shots for public use.
“All vaccines have some local adverse events associated with them; injection site redness, tenderness, swelling, those things occur, we know that. And it's the same with these vaccines. Typically, both the local and systemic adverse events would last for a day or two,†Chatterjee added.
more,
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/covid-19-vaccines-what-you-need-to-know-about-side-effects-and-risks
