UK warns against Pfizer vaccine for people with severe allergies

The 2019 Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) vaccine, a collaboration between US-based Pfizer and German biotech BioNTech, was administered in the United Kingdom yesterday, and UK health authorities today warned that people with a history of severe allergies should not receive the vaccine for the time being.

The warning comes as two NHS staff members on the first wave of vaccine administration list had an allergic reaction and had to be treated.

Both had a history of allergic reactions and are now recovering well, said Stephen Powis, NHS England’s medical director.

Powis said the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recommends that, as a precaution, “people with a history of severe allergic reactions should not be vaccinated with this vaccine.

Severe allergic reactions include reactions to drugs, foods and vaccines, according to the MHRA.

Thousands of people in the United Kingdom were vaccinated yesterday, becoming the first country in the West to administer the approved vaccine COVID-19, the largest vaccination campaign by the British National Health Service since 1948.

The vaccine is administered in two doses, with the first and second doses administered 21 days apart, and seniors over the age of 80 and welfare workers are the first targets of the national vaccine program.

Of the 40 million doses of vaccine ordered in the United Kingdom, the first batch of about 800,000 doses has already been delivered, with up to 4 million doses scheduled to be delivered by the end of December.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said he understood global concerns about the speed with which pharmaceutical companies could produce COVID-19, but stressed that there were absolutely no shortcuts to be taken.

The vaccine is being tested in exactly the same way as vaccines already in use, he told an online press conference in Geneva.

Pfizer said it had been notified by the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Agency about an allergic reaction to the administration of the vaccine. However, Pfizer said that the vaccine was generally well tolerated in a Phase III trial of more than 40,000 people and that there were no serious safety concerns.