Heather Lieberman (L), 28, receives a COVID-19 vaccination from Yaquelin De La Cruz at the Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Florida, on August 13, 2020. CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Everyone is anxiously waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine. But as the world’s most cutting-edge drugmakers race towards the finish line, things have gotten complicated.
In the U.S., there are four companies that are in the final stage of testing their COVID-19 vaccines: Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. All of them have reported side effects in trial participants after giving the shots. Two companies—AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson—have paused phase 3 human testing in the U.S. after several volunteers fell so ill that it worried health regulators.
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It’s not uncommon for vaccines to induce adverse responses in healthy people. Most of them will still make it past the FDA as long as the discomfort is mild and temporary. Yet, it’s something the public needs to know before taking any vaccine, especially one for a highly contagious virus like COVID-19, which would require vast adoption to stem its spread.
Moderna and Pfizer: chills, fevers, headache, shortness of breath, pain in the arm
Last month, Luke Hutchison, a 44-year-old volunteer in Moderna’s phase 3 trial, said he’d had a mild fever after taking the first shot of Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine, and “full-on COVID-like symptoms” after the second shot.
Received my booster shot for the #Moderna #vaccine Stage 3 clinical trial. Experienced mild fever after the 1st shot, but full-on #COVID-like symptoms for 12hrs after the 2nd shot. Fever, chills, muscle and joint aches, really hot hands and feet, headache, general malaise, cough.
— Luke Hutchison (@LH) September 17, 2020
Two other participants in Moderna’s study experienced similar side effects, according to CNBC. But they declined to go on the record. Hutchinson said he decided to go public about it because he was concerned that Moderna might not fully inform the public about its vaccine’s potential side effects.
Pfizer: fever, fatigue, chills, redness and swelling
Last Wednesday, Pfizer said in a report that some participants in the company’s late-stage trials had experienced mild side effects after getting the first shot of the vaccine and that fewer participants reported side effects after taking the second shot.
“Systemic events (fatigue, headache, chills, muscle pain and joint paint) were reported in small numbers of younger recipients of [the second shot],” Pfizer said in a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine. “But no severe systemic events were reported by older recipients of this vaccine candidate.”
A few volunteers in the younger group reported redness and swelling at the injection site.
AstraZeneca: neurological disorder
At least two participants in AstraZeneca’s phase 3 trial experienced transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord, after receiving the company’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
The British pharma company halted testing globally last month after the first case of transverse myelitis was reported. On September 11, AstraZeneca published a report saying “there was insufficient evidence to say for certain that the illnesses were or were not related to the vaccine.”
The company has resumed phase 3 trials in the U.K., Brazil, South Africa and India, but not yet in the U.S.
