A US doctor with a shellfish allergy suffered a severe allergic reaction on Christmas Eve after receiving the Moderna coronavirus vaccine in the first week of its national launch, according to US media reports.
Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, a geriatric oncologist at Boston Medical Center, said he began to feel dizzy and his heart began to flow shortly after he was vaccinated on Thursday.
Read more:
Modern approved vaccine: What we know about side effects, ingredients and doses
“My heart rate was 150, my normal heart rate was 75, but … six, seven minutes after the vaccine was injected, I felt a strange sensation of tingling and numbness in my tongue and also in my throat, the same reaction that I had a shellfish allergy before, “Sadrzadeh told CNN on Friday.
As his blood pressure dropped, he decided to use his personal EpiPen, a regular adrenaline auto-injector to treat acute allergic reactions, which he had brought to the vaccination program before being rushed. in an emergency.
He told the Boston Globe that it was the “worst allergic reaction” he had experienced as an adult.
[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]
“I really want people to take this seriously, those people who have severe allergic reactions,” he told the newspaper.
“I want to talk to their doctors, their allergist. I want them to take their EpiPen if they have it at home and also inform the person giving them that injection that they have a severe allergic reaction. “
“I had the experience. I was a doctor and I was scared to death, “said Sadrzadeh.
A Boston Medical Center spokesman confirmed the incident in a statement, saying Sadrzadeh had been evaluated, discharged and was on Friday.
Sadrzadeh’s case is the first severe public reaction to the Moderna vaccine, which, like the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, was developed using mRNA technology.
Canada approved the Moderna vaccine on Wednesday, with the first doses landing in the country a day later.
The country will receive up to 168,000 doses before the end of December and is expected to be launched next week.
It is not uncommon for a vaccine or any medicine to lead to side effects.
Health Canada has informed that people who have previously had allergic reactions to any of the ingredients listed in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine should not receive the doses.
It is said that most of the side effects of the Moderna vaccine are expected to be mild and should not last very long.
Read more:
Canada is monitoring the Pfizer vaccine after allergic reactions in the UK
Signs of an allergic reaction will include hives, difficulty breathing and swollen tongue, face or throat. Health Canada has advised anyone who believes they may experience an allergic reaction to receive medical care “immediately.”
The US Food and Drug Administration said last week that it was investigating at least five cases of allergic reactions that occurred after people were given the Pfizer vaccine.
Dr. Karina Top, an investigator at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology and a professor at Dalhousie University, said an allergic reaction to any vaccine can begin within minutes, but occasionally lasts up to two to three hours after vaccination.
“Allergic reactions that develop more than four hours after vaccination are almost always due to another cause, such as a reaction to a food or medicine,” she told Global News in a previous interview.
View link »
© 2020 Global News, or division of Corus Entertainment Inc.