A doctor in the United States suffered a severe allergic reaction just minutes after getting a shot of pharmaceutical company Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine, The New York Times reported on Friday.
Dr Hossein Sadrzadeh, an oncologist at Boston Medical Center, received the vaccine on Thursday. Sadrzadeh told The New York Times that he began feeling dizzy and his heart started racing immediately after inoculation. He is allergic to shellfish.
Boston Medical Centre spokesperson David Kibbe said in a statement that Sadrzadeh was doing well after being discharged from the emergency department. A record of the doctor’s hospital visit said that he experienced “shortness of breath, dizziness, palpitations and numbness” after being vaccinated.
After recovering from the allergic reaction, the doctor said, “I don’t want anybody to go through that.”
This is the first reported case of an allergic reaction linked to Moderna’s vaccine. The company began rolling out the vaccine in the US after receiving emergency-use authorisation last week.
Before Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech had received emergency approval for their vaccine in the US. At least six cases of allergic reaction have been linked to their vaccine, according to The New York Times.
Last month, Moderna had said that its vaccine showed 94.5% efficacy during its phase three trials. The vaccine can be kept at typical refrigerator temperatures and does not require the ultra-cold temperatures of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. It is administered in two shots, 28 days apart.
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