Healthcare worker suffers allergic reaction after getting Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine

A Boston oncology doctor experienced a severe allergic reaction after he received Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, a rare reaction that has also happened after people took the Pfizer vaccine.

Boston Medical Center doctor Hossein Sadrzadeh, who has a shellfish allergy, suffered an anaphylactic reaction following a dose of the Moderna vaccine on Christmas Eve, he told The New York Times.

BMC confirmed the allergic reaction incident on Friday.

“The employee received the Moderna vaccine Thursday and as is our standard practice was being observed post vaccination by trained nurses,” BMC said in a statement. “He felt he was developing an allergic reaction and was allowed to self-administer his personal epi-pen.

“He was taken to the Emergency Department, evaluated, treated, observed and discharged,” the hospital added. “He is doing well today.”

The CDC has learned of reports that some people have experienced severe allergic reactions, also known as anaphylaxis, after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.

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The rare severe allergic reactions could be tied to a chemical found in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. The compound called polyethylene glycol “could be a culprit here,” the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research recently said about the allergic reactions.

“We just don’t know at this point, and we’ll just have to use our good pharmacovigilance to monitor what’s going on,” Director Peter Marks.

The FDA is working with the CDC on investigating the cause of these allergic reactions.

“We’ll be looking at all of the data we can from each of these reactions to sort out exactly what happened, and we’ll also be looking to try to understand which component of the vaccine might be helping to produce them,” Marks said.

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