INFOVAX: Anaphylaxis and Covid-19 vaccine

This article was originally designed to cover the long-term safety of the Covid-19 vaccine. However, over the past week, there have been quite a few questions about severe allergic reactions (called anaphylaxis) in the context of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Therefore, this segment will focus on the answer to this question. How likely is it to have a severe allergic reaction from the Covid-19 vaccine and how dangerous is this?

Many of us couldn’t wait to get the vaccine (and many expressed this dissatisfaction by various means, including social media), but even me as a vaccine advocate. We arrive here in our country, which has been somewhat softened by the time it took for the first set of Covid-19 vaccines.

The reason for this is simple. Thanks to this delay, millions of “valuable” safety data have been obtained from vaccination deployments in various countries. This data is powerful enough to convince any denial or conspiracy theorist of the imagination. Vaccine danger.

The United States, United Kingdom, and many European countries have very strong reporting mechanisms for documenting the side effects of given drugs and vaccines. For example, the United States has a US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System that reports side effects from both vaccinated healthcare professionals and those who have been vaccinated by themselves. The UK has a similar reporting mechanism called the Yellow Card Safety Surveillance System, which also knows the side effects of the vaccines being administered.

The data available at the time of this writing show that the United States has administered more than 60 million Covid-19 vaccines (mainly composed of the mRNA vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna). Meanwhile, the UK has received more than 15 million doses (Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which consists primarily of modified inactivated influenza adenovirus).

One of the serious side effects that individuals may have when taking medication or vaccination is anaphylaxis, a rare but severe allergic reaction. Anaphylaxis occurs within seconds or minutes of taking a drug or injecting a vaccine.

When exposed to this allergen, the body’s immune system quickly floods the body with certain chemicals, causing shock, lowering blood pressure, and impeding breathing. To be sure, the condition is life-threatening.

However, anaphylaxis does not just come from drugs and vaccines. For people with allergies, it can be caused by exposure to any allergic substance, including peanuts, or by bee stings.

Let’s take this into account. According to documented evidence, the proportion of food allergies to various foods in children under the age of 18 is about 6% of milk. 2.5% for eggs; 3.6% for wheat; 1.3% for peanuts; 1.3% for seafood. In the UK, anaphylaxis hospitalization rates are approximately 2.4 per 100,000 children under the age of 18 (adult hospitalization rates are much lower).

For the Covid-19 vaccine, these are the current anaphylaxis rates.

This may be a slight generalization, but the risk of anaphylaxis is very low and the risk of food allergies can be high. The analysis of the data is also very clear. More than 80% of people with Covid-19 vaccine anaphylaxis already have a recorded history of allergies or allergic reactions, indicating that nearly a quarter of them previously had anaphylaxis episodes. I will.

Two other points to note from the data analysis were important. First, a person with anaphylaxis was hospitalized, but did not die and all these cases recovered. Second, 90% of anaphylactic episodes occurred within 30 minutes of vaccination. This is the period of time monitored within the vaccinated medical facility.

Therefore, if you are not allergic to something, it seems unlikely that anyone will actually develop anaphylaxis from the Covid-19 vaccine. Do people who know allergies or allergic reactions need to be vaccinated against Covid-19? Please read the box below to find out.

When a vaccination program is started, people who have never had an allergic reaction in their lives are unlikely to be vaccinated and develop anaphylaxis.

Still, to address that unlikely possibility, safety measures have been taken to monitor you during the process and take immediate action in the event of annoyances such as anaphylaxis. I will.

If you want to keep up with the previous topics covered in this series, you can get them from the links below.

INFOVAX is a community education and awareness series on the Covid-19 vaccine provided by the Malaysian Medical Association Public Health Association (MMA PHS). Feel free to ask questions and answer your questions about the Covid-19 vaccine. [email protected].. Your questions and answers will be collated and answered in the next session.