A New York City health care worker takes a vial of the Chinese Communist virus (Wuhan pneumonia) vaccine out of the refrigerator on Jan. 4, 2021.
In the United States, more than 1,000 people who have received the CCPV (Wuhan pneumonia) vaccine have had adverse reactions, and hundreds of them have been taken to emergency rooms.
On Dec. 16, 2020, a patient in Michigan felt dizzy and experienced chest tightness and tingling in her hands after the vaccination. She repeatedly told her doctor, “I think I’m having a panic attack.” She was then taken to the emergency room for evaluation.
This was one of the cases of patients sent to the hospital emergency room on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which records 308 people brought to the emergency room after vaccination, 17 of whom had “life-threatening Of these, 17 were “life-threatening” and two had “permanent disability. As of Jan. 5, 2021, 4.8 million people have been vaccinated across the U.S., and 0.64 percent of the total vaccination population has been sent to the emergency room with adverse reactions.
In other cases, patients have experienced adverse reactions of nausea, tremors, tingling and wheezing.
In another case in Georgia, the vaccinator, a male, 33 years old, received the Pfizer vaccine on Dec. 17, 2020, after which he experienced dry mouth and a slight tingling of the tongue, but no swelling; the uncomfortable reaction made it necessary for him to sit down for 15 minutes to take a breather.
“I was tested for anaphylaxis. I felt like adrenaline shock, felt my heart racing, my (blood pressure) was high, and I spent an hour in the emergency room for observation. I had the same feeling when I contracted COVID in July. This morning around 1 a.m. I felt cold, but it’s all gone now.” The 33-year-old Joe State man wrote in his report.
Established in 1990, VAERS was an early warning system in the United States to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines and is administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Anyone can report an adverse condition to the system.
According to the VAERS system website, “VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine is causing a health problem, but is particularly useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that signal possible safety problems with vaccines. In this way, VAERS can provide valuable information for the CDC and FDA to conduct additional work and assessments to further gauge possible safety issues.”
According to federal health department guidance, anyone who is allergic to any component of the vaccine should not receive the vaccine. But after the vaccine was approved to begin administering it to people, rumors quickly spread that vaccine recipients were experiencing allergies, or other adverse physical reactions. As of January 5, 2021, 1,156 people have reported to VAERS that they were unable to work or perform daily activities or required care from a health care professional after receiving the first dose of the vaccine.
A healthcare professional at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Alaska had a suspected severe allergic reaction, or anaphylaxis, after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. She was taken to the emergency room, where she spent several nights before being discharged.
The CDC updated its guidance late last year, asking that anyone who develops an allergic reaction after the first dose of vaccine be prohibited from receiving a second dose. The interval between doses of the vaccine is three weeks. The agency also said that is anyone with an allergy to polysorbate, a non-vaccine component, should not receive the vaccine.
The FDA’s adverse event reporting system has not yet been updated for the fourth quarter of 2020, and a CDC spokesman said in late December last year that they were developing a plan for reporting adverse reactions to vaccines; the agency has not responded this month on the progress of the plan.
Neither the FDA nor the CDC responded to requests for comment on the more than 300 people sent to emergency rooms on the VAERS system.
A Pfizer spokeswoman said in a statement Tuesday (Jan. 5) that the company is closely monitoring all reports following vaccination, including any individuals who are diagnosed as sick or experiencing symptoms, saying, “We will be reviewing all available case information, as well as all reports of confirmed events following vaccination.”
Moderna did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
However, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Brett Giroir said the vaccines are safe for most people and encouraged many Americans to get them, adding that they do not necessarily cause adverse reactions.
According to a team of Massachusetts General Hospital allergists, who found that allergic reactions generally occur in 1.31 cases per 1 million doses of vaccine and that reactions are often attributed to inactive ingredients in the vaccine, they recommend that health care providers ask vaccine recipients if they have a history of severe allergic reactions. If people answer “yes,” they should undergo a skin test with PEG, and if the test is positive, then these people should not receive a second dose of the vaccine.
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