Chief Scientific Adviser of US COVID-19 vaccine watchdog, Operation Warp Speed, Dr. Moncef Slaoui says the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is causing allergic reactions at a rate that is higher than ‘what one could expect from’ other vaccines.
CNN reported Slaoui as stating that as of Tuesday when he was last updated, six serious allergic reactions had been reported.
“A New York City healthcare worker became the sixth known person to suffer a ‘severe’ allergic reaction to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
“Two British healthcare workers went into anaphylactic shock when they received it in the first week of it being given out and three in Alaska also suffered similar reactions.
“More than 30,000 COVID-19 vaccines have been given out in New York City and they are the only known persons to have had a reaction,” the Daily Mail report read in part.
“That frequency, as it stood yesterday, is superior to what one would expect with other vaccines,” Slaoui told CNN on Wednesday.
He added that the high rate of allergic reactions prompted discussions between the vaccine makers and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to consider running clinical trials of the vaccines in very allergic populations
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Such clinical trials, he explained, would help understand what is triggering the reactions.
CNBC had on Monday quoted a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official as saying that the institute had commenced investigations into why some persons that took the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine suffered such severe allergic reactions.