Increased side effects are normal after second COVID-19 vaccine shot, doctors say
Scientists say it s unclear why the second dose causes more fatigue, chills and other reactions than the first shot, but that is normal and a sign that it s working. Author: Kaila Lafferty (KING5) Updated: 5:41 PM MST January 31, 2021
EVERETT, Wash. Robin Addison is a nurse at Providence Medical Center in Everett. She treated the first ever COVID-19 patient in the U.S. and now a year later, she s fully vaccinated against the virus. I got my first vaccine and had a headache for a day and some arm pain and that was it,” Addison said. But she had a worse reaction to her second dose.
Are the coronavirus vaccines safe for someone with cancer or dementia?
Judith Graham, The Washington Post
Jan. 31, 2021
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As public demand grows for limited supplies of coronavirus vaccines, questions remain about their appropriateness for older adults with various illnesses. Among them are cancer patients receiving active treatment, dementia patients near the end of their lives and people with autoimmune conditions.
Recently, a number of readers have asked me whether older relatives with these conditions should be immunized. This is a matter for medical experts, and I solicited advice from several. All strongly suggested that people with questions should contact their doctors and discuss their individual medical circumstances.
At first glance, the results reported on Friday from the long-awaited trial of Johnson & Johnson s Covid-19 vaccine might have seemed disappointing. Its overall efficacy - the ability to prevent moderate and severe disease - was reported at 72 percent in the United States, 66 percent in Latin American countries and 57 percent in South Africa.
Those figures appear far below the high bar set by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the first two vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States, which reported overall efficacy from 94 to 95 percent.
But Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation s leading infectious disease expert, said that the more crucial measure was the ability to prevent severe disease, which translates to keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths. And that result, for Johnson & Johnson, was 85 percent in all of the countries where it was tested, including South Africa, where a rapidly spreading variant of the virus had shown some ability to elude vaccines.
It s unclear how widespread emerging variants are in the US
The US has effectively been driving blind in the face of these threats. The nation ranks 38th in the world in sequencing efforts that identify variants. Instead of tracking these mutants every step of the way, the US public health system sees only fractions of what is going on with the pandemic.
The US confirmed its first cases from the P.1 and B.1.351 variants just in the last few days. Two South Carolinians were infected with the B.1.351 version, despite not having traveled to South Africa or to other countries where it is spreading.