A Boston oncology doctor experienced a severe allergic reaction after receiving Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, a rare reaction that also happened after people got the Pfizer vaccine.
Boston Medical Center doctor Hossein Sadrzadeh, who is allergic to shellfish, suffered an anaphylactic reaction after a dose of the Modern vaccine on Christmas Eve, he told The New York Times.
BMC confirmed the incident of allergic reaction on Friday.
“The employee received the Moderna vaccine on Thursday and, as is our standard practice, was observed after vaccination by trained nurses,” said the BMC in a statement. “He felt that he was developing an allergic reaction and was allowed to self-administer his personal epi-pen.
“He was taken to the emergency room, evaluated, treated, observed and released,” added the hospital. “He’s fine today.”
The CDC became aware of reports that some people had severe allergic reactions, also known as anaphylaxis, after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
The rare serious allergic reactions can be associated with a chemical found in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The compound called polyethylene glycol “may be to blame here,” the director of the FDA’s Center for Biological Research and Evaluation said recently about allergic reactions.
“We just don’t know right now, and we’re just going to have to use our good pharmacovigilance to monitor what is going on,” Director Peter Marks.
The FDA is working with the CDC to investigate the cause of these allergic reactions.
“We will be examining all the data we can from each of these reactions to find out exactly what happened and we will also try to understand which component of the vaccine may be helping to produce them,” Marks said.
The CDC recommends that people who have already had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in a COVID-19 vaccine do not receive that specific vaccine.