Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine rarely triggers allergic reactions, finds US study

A study conducted in the United States has found that severe allergic reactions are rare among recipients of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine. According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, only 10 cases of severe allergic reactions were detected in Moderna COVID-19 vaccine recipients after more than 4 million received the first shot between December 21 and January 10. The CDC said only 10 cases of anaphylaxis were detected in recipients, which is a life-threatening allergic reaction that occurs rarely after vaccination. Meanwhile, zero deaths were reported among Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine recipients. CDC said that nine out of the 10 allergic reactions were reported immediately after the vaccine was administered, within 15 minutes of inoculation. 

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Moderna received an emergency use authorisation certificate for its COVID-19 vaccine from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 18. The vaccine is a two-dose drug that requires to be administered 28 days apart from one another. As of January 10, the US government had inoculated more than 4 million first doses across the country. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received 1,266 reports of adverse events after receipt of the Moderna vaccine, of which 108 were identified for further review as possible cases of a severe allergic reaction, including anaphylaxis. According to the CDC, only 10 cases were identified as anaphylaxis among the 108 cases of possible severe reactions reported by VAERS. Among these 10 cases, nine persons had a documented history of allergies or allergic reactions, five of whom had a previous history of anaphylaxis. 

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US CDC changes guidelines

The US CDC recently changed its vaccination guidelines allowing authorities to administer the second dose 42 days after the first jab, which it had earlier refused to tweak citing a lack of data regarding the same. "The second dose should be administered as close to the recommended interval as possible. However, if it is not feasible to adhere to the recommended interval, the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines may be scheduled for administration up to 6 weeks (42 days) after the first dose," CDC said. The United States is the world affected nation with more than 24 million COVID-19 cases and over 4,00,000 deaths. As of January 23, the US has administered over 19 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, which is the most in the world. 

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