Just one of the 30,000 people who have received the Covid-19 vaccine in New York City to date responded seriously to the shot, city officials said Wednesday.
A health worker in town developed anaphylaxis after getting the Pfizer Inc.
-BioNTech SE injection. The employee, who was not identified, is in stable condition, officials said.
A spokesperson for the city’s health department gave no further information about the employee. The department is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track down other side effects of the vaccine, officials said.
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“We will continue to monitor those events and make sure we take it seriously,” Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, said at a news conference on Wednesday. He added that the serious side effect was unusual and that the vaccines are generally very safe.
On Dec. 18, there were six reports of allergic reactions to the Pfizer-BioNTech shot in the US, according to the CDC. By then, more than 272,000 doses of the vaccine had been administered.
Earlier this month, the UK reported two cases of anaphylaxis from the vaccine, according to the CDC.
To date, 89,000 people across New York City have received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.
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While working out his agenda for the year ahead, the Democratic governor said he was trying to combine economic activity with social distance. “The balance will be, how do you use vaccinations and testing to determine safety?” Mr Cuomo said.
The state has prioritized vaccinations for health workers, as well as residents and staff in nursing homes.
On Wednesday, workers from the fire department of New York’s emergency medical services also began receiving the vaccine. FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said at a press conference that nearly 6,000 FDNY employees have contracted Covid-19 since the pandemic started.
“We hope that we can vaccinate 450 people a day in three locations and start bringing this protection, this miracle that happened to us, and put Covid behind us,” said Mr Nigro.
Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 patients in New York hospitals rose again on Tuesday to 6,864, state officials said. Officials said 164 people in the state died of the virus on Tuesday, and of the 204,361 coronavirus tests reported to the state, 5.84% were positive.
Write to Katie Honan at [email protected] and Jimmy Vielkind at [email protected]
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Appeared in the December 24, 2020 print edition as “Health worker had serious adverse reaction to vaccine.”