An American doctor with a seafood allergy suffered a severe allergic reaction on Christmas Eve after receiving Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine in the first week of its nationwide launch, according to American media reports.
Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, a geriatric oncologist at Boston Medical Center, said he started to feel dizzy and that his heart raced shortly after being vaccinated on Thursday.
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“My heart rate was 150, my normal heart rate is 75 but … six, seven minutes after the vaccine injection, I felt my tongue and also my throat having, like, a strange tingling and numbness sensation, the same reaction that I had before my seafood allergy, ”Sadrzadeh told CNN on Friday.
When his blood pressure dropped, he decided to use his personal EpiPen, a common adrenaline autoinjector to treat acute allergic reactions, which he had brought to the vaccine appointment, before he was rushed to the emergency room.
He told the Boston Globe that it was the “worst allergic reaction” he experienced as an adult.
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“I really want people to take this seriously, those people who have severe allergic reactions,” he told the newspaper.
“I want you to talk to your doctors, your allergist. I want them to carry their EpiPen, if they have it at home, and also inform the person giving the injection that they have a serious allergic reaction. “
“I had the experience. I was a doctor and I was scared to death, ”said Sadrzadeh.
A Boston Medical Center spokesman confirmed the incident in a statement, saying Sadrzadeh was assessed, dismissed and was fine on Friday.
Sadrzadeh’s case is reportedly the first severe publicly linked reaction to Moderna’s vaccine, which, like the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, was developed using mRNA technology.
Canada approved Moderna’s vaccine on Wednesday, with the first doses arriving in the country a day later.
The country will receive up to 168,000 doses before the end of December and a launch is scheduled to begin next week.
It is not uncommon for a vaccine or any medication to result in side effects.
Health Canada has warned that people who have had previous allergic reactions to any of the ingredients listed in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines should not receive the doses.
He says most of the side effects of the Moderna vaccine should be mild and should not last long.
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Signs of an allergic reaction include hives, difficulty breathing and a swollen tongue, face or throat. Health Canada advised anyone who believes they are having an allergic reaction to seek medical attention “immediately”.
The United States Food and Drug Administration said last week that it is investigating at least five cases of allergic reactions that happened after people received the Pfizer vaccine.
Dr. Karina Top, a researcher at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology and a professor at Dalhousie University, said that an allergic reaction to any vaccine can start in minutes, but sometimes takes up to two or three hours after vaccination.
“Allergic reactions that develop more than four hours after vaccination are almost always due to another cause, such as a reaction to a food or medicine,” she told Global News in an earlier interview.
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