In the world’s most detailed data on how people feel after a Pfizer COVID vaccine, Israel found that less than 0.3% had side effects that they considered significant enough to report to doctors.
Ministry of Health officials who released the survey believe it will provide peace of mind to many people around the world who are eager to get an image of the vaccine’s impact. They wrote that the side effects are “similar in frequency and character to the symptoms reported after other vaccines administered to the population”.
They also emphasized that side effects are usually “mild” and “pass quickly”.
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After the first shot, 6,575 of the 2,768,200 Israelis sought medical attention for side effects, which is 0.24%. The number after the second shot was 0.26% – 3,592 out of 1,377,827 recipients.
The last number indicates that, although the second injection is known to leave some people feeling unwell, it rarely turns into formal medical complaints.
Israelis at a vaccination center run by the Clalit Health Service in Petah Tikva, January 27, 2021. (Miriam Alster / Flash90)
The doctors responded enthusiastically to the data. “People around the world should feel comfortable,” said Yoav Yehezkeli, a doctor and public health specialist at the University of Tel Aviv who was not involved in the study, to The Times of Israel.
Few complaints ended in hospitalization – an average of 17 patients per million after the first injection and three patients per million after the second injection. Yehezkeli said doctors expected some patients to experience significant side effects, and he personally treated a patient who had partial facial nerve palsy after his second injection, but said the statistics show that the incidence is low. Your patient has recovered.
It was the first major analysis of side effects in the real world, often involving the number involved in Pfizer clinical trials. Their findings, which are accurate until Jan. 27, live up to the expectations of healthcare organizations around the world based on test data.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in America noted before the vaccine was made available that it can cause side effects that are usually “mild to moderate”, while “a small number of people have had serious side effects”.
The CDC expected the main side effects to be localized pain or broader symptoms, such as chills and headaches, which “may look like flu-like symptoms”. This is what the Israeli data found.
A doctor in a protective suit and mask holds an injection syringe and vaccine. (oshcherban via iStock by Getty Images)
The vast majority of complaints were localized pain in the arm or general discomfort. Arm pain was responsible for 50% of complaints in the first injection and 22% of complaints in the second injection. About 41% of complaints from the first attempt and 73% of complainants from the second attempt reported that they generally do not feel well.
There were also some more unusual side effects.
Neurological symptoms were reported by 287 vaccinates of the first dose and 96 vaccinates of the second dose. There were 165 reports of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, after the first injection and 47 after the second injection. Other unusual side effects were reported by 60 and 19 people after the first and second injections, respectively.
Israel’s statistics must be treated as reliable because the country’s health system involves “active surveillance” of side effects, said Yehezkeli. “They are important figures because many people in Israel have already been vaccinated and the health system is very organized with methods of reporting side effects,” he commented.
“I am a practicing doctor and whenever I report a patient with, say, fever, who was recently vaccinated, the computer system generates an alert and asks me if I want to report it as a side effect. This is what I call active surveillance. “
