what side effects can you expect?

After the subsequent announcements by Pfizer and Moderna laboratories on the upcoming availability of their respective Covid-19 vaccines, governments around the world are organizing to prepare the vaccination of their population.

Should the latter occur in at-risk populations by the end of the year or early 2021, the question arises of the potential side effects of these candidate vaccines.

However, according to several American doctors, the side effects of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines could be significant and vaccination far from pleasant.

The challenge of the second dose of vaccine

As reported by the US media CNBC, the issue was raised by several health professionals during a meeting with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During this interview, the need to warn the populations about any unpleasant side effects that will derive from vaccination was mentioned in particular. “We really need to raise awareness that this is not going to be a walk in the park”, said Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association (AMA).

The goal: to prevent patients from these “difficult side effects” but not so bad that they go back to being injected with the second dose of vaccine, essential for its effectiveness.

Minor side effects

What exactly are these side effects reported in Phase 3 clinical trials? If no laboratory has noticed a serious side effect, the inconvenience observed in a minority of volunteers could still dissuade the population from vaccination.

Thus, in September, Moderna and Pfizer reported that some participants in their clinical trials had experienced fevers, headaches, body aches, or even severe fatigue. However, the two labs confirmed, although unpleasant, these side effects subsided after 24 hours.

For their part, the French health authorities have also taken the initiative to inform the populations of the possible side effects of vaccination against Covid. “Side effects in a clinical trial are, as with a vaccination, most of the time not serious. Possible side effects can be fever, malaise, body aches, headache, redness or swelling at the injection site. But in most some cases disappear on their own within a few days “, we can read on the Covireivac platform, the tool for recruiting participants in French clinical trials developed by Inserm.

The platform also remembers this “People participating in a trial are closely monitored to address any side effects quickly.”. This monitoring consists of an observation “between 30 minutes and 4 hours, depending on the phase of the trial, after the administration of the vaccine, they are then monitored daily for the first week, then weekly for a month”.

Possible very rare side effects months after vaccination

However, an unknown factor remains: the long-term side effects. As pointed out in an interview with Figaro the chairman of the Covid-19 Vaccine Committee Marie-Paule Kienny, “We agree that serious events can occur up to 6 months after a vaccination and very rare side effects may occur that we will not see until we have vaccinated a number of people”.

Furthermore, as clinical trials are mainly conducted on young and healthy patients, it is currently not possible to know a posteriori the effectiveness of vaccines on people at risk such as the elderly, people with obesity, diabetes or hypertension.

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