London: The mass Covid-19 vaccination in UK – the world’s first -- has run into problems with two National Health Staffers suffering an ‘anaphylactic reaction'.
Less severe than anaphylaxis, it results in a rash, shortness of breath, swelling of the face and tongue or a drop in blood pressure. Immediately warnings were put out that people with a history of serious allergy to medicines or food should not get themselves inoculated. Both the unnamed healthcare workers needed immediate treatment but it is understood that they are recovering.
According to NHS, up to 7 million people in Britain have allergies severe enough to require medical care, reports the Daily Mail.
The patient safety leaflet for the vaccine cautions that anyone with an allergy to any of the active substances in the vaccine should not receive the jab.
On Tuesday, the NHS kick started its ambitious plan to vaccinate the entire UK population against coronavirus. Despite the two early setbacks, the authorities continued to vaccinate between 5,000 and 7,000 people per day across the UK; at least 800,000 Pfizer doses are already in hospitals and millions more are on the way.
Media reports said in the pivotal phase 3 clinical trial, this vaccine was generally well tolerated with no serious safety concerns reported by the independent Data Monitoring Committee.
The scare came hours after Britain's drug regulator dismissed safety fears over the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine after a report revealed four people in a trial in the US got Bell's palsy. The condition, which is usually temporary, causes muscles on one side of the face to droop because of nerves not working properly, the Daily Mail adds.
It was a historic moment for thousands of elderly British patients on Tuesday when they got the first jab outside of medical trials. Ninety-year-old Margaret Keenan, a grandmother, was the first in line. 'If I can have it at 90, then you can have it too,' was her gritty response on being inoculated.
(To receive our E-paper on WhatsApp daily, please click here. To receive it on Telegram, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)
