An American doctor with a shellfish allergy had a severe allergic reaction on Christmas Eve after receiving Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine in the first week of the nationwide rollout, according to US media.
Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, a geriatric oncologist at Boston Medical Center, said he started feeling dizzy and his heart started pounding quickly 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 injection of the vaccine, I felt a strange tingling and numbness in my tongue and also in my throat, the same reaction I had before. had because of my shellfish allergy, ”Sadrzadeh told CNN on Friday.
When his blood pressure dropped, he decided to use his personal EpiPen, a regular adrenaline auto-injector to treat acute allergic reactions, which he brought to the vaccination appointment before being rushed to the emergency room.
He told the Boston Globe that it was the “worst allergic reaction” he had experienced as an adult.
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“I really want people to take this seriously, those people with severe allergic reactions,” he said in the paper.
“I want them to talk to their doctors, to their allergist. I want them to have their EpiPen with them when they have it at home and also let the person administering the injection know that they have a severe allergic reaction. “
“I had the experience. I was a doctor and I was terrified, ”Sadrzadeh said.
A Boston Medical Center spokesperson confirmed the incident in a statement, saying Sadrzadeh was being evaluated, fired and doing well Friday.
Sadrzadeh’s case is reportedly the first serious reaction publicly associated with 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 in the country a day later.
The country will receive up to 168,000 doses by the end of December and the rollout is expected to begin next week.
It’s not uncommon for a vaccine or other drug to cause side effects.
Health Canada has advised that people who have previously had allergic reactions to any of the listed ingredients in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine should not receive the doses.
It says most side effects from Moderna’s vaccine were expected to be mild and would 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 has advised anyone suspected of having an allergic reaction to seek medical attention “immediately”.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said last week that it is investigating at least five cases of allergic reactions that occurred after people received the Pfizer vaccine.
Dr. Karina Top, a researcher at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology and a professor at Dalhousie University, said an allergic reaction to any vaccine can start within minutes, but occasionally lasts up to two or three hours after vaccination.
“Allergic reactions that occur more than four hours after vaccination are almost always due to some other cause, such as a reaction to food or medication,” she told Global News in a previous interview.
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