U.S. plans to study allergic reactions from Pfizer’s Covid vaccine – By Berkeley Lovelace Jr. (CNBC) / Dec 21 2020
- The U.S. is planning a study to find out why a handful of people have suffered from allergic reactions after receiving a Covid vaccine, an NIAID official told CNBC.
- The study is expected to include “several hundred” people who have a history of severe allergic reactions, said Alkis Togias, chief of the NIAID’s Allergy, Asthma, and Airway Biology Branch.
- Researchers hope to begin the study in a matter of weeks.
The U.S. is looking at why a handful of people have suffered from severe allergic reactions shortly after receiving Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine shots, a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official told CNBC on Monday.
The study – which is still in the early planning phases – is expected to include “several hundred” people who have a history of severe allergic reactions, said Alkis Togias, chief of the NIAID’s Allergy, Asthma, and Airway Biology Branch. His department will lead the study, which researchers hope to begin in a matter of weeks, though the timing isn’t guaranteed. While the reactions have been reported by people who got Pfizer’s shot, the study may look at the vaccines made by both Pfizer and Moderna.
Togias said researchers at the NIAID, an agency within the National Institutes of Health, became interested in the rare phenomenon after reports that a few people had reactions to Pfizer’s vaccine that qualified as anaphylaxis, a severe and potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. Just last week, a clinician in Alaska suffered anaphylactic symptoms about 10 minutes after being given Pfizer’s vaccine, becoming the third health-care worker in the state to suffer an adverse reaction to the new drug.
