What to know about COVID-19 vaccines

A message from a CSUB nursing lecturer and Kern Medical vaccine coordinator

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 21^st, 2021

As the COVID-19 vaccine coordinator at Kern Medical, I have a front-row seat for the hopeful light at the end of the tunnel that is the coronavirus pandemic. After months of overwhelmed hospitals, stay-at-home orders and devastating losses, vaccines are here. Though they are a welcome development for many, others have questions and concerns they want addressed before getting the shot.

I was one of the early recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine here at Kern Medical and received my second dose last week. I did not have any systemic side effects from the first injection but did have very sore injection-site pain that lasted for a day; the second injection was less painful than the first but did give me a chill that night that required a sweater and a few extra blankets.

To date, we have vaccinated close to 2,000 people and have had three reports of hives and no reports of anaphylaxis. As the coordinator, I am made aware of any significant reactions so that I can report them to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

In the Pfizer-BioNTech trial, over 30,000 patients were studied, with roughly half getting the vaccine and half getting placebo. COVID-19 was detected in 185 patients who received placebo while only 11 were detected in the vaccine arm (94% efficacy). The Moderna vaccine had very similar results and both vaccines provided protection approximately 10 days after the first dose, with maximum protection coming several days after the second dose.

In the trials and in real world experience, most recipients reported injection site pain, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, joint pain, and fever. Like any medication, serious side effects are possible but rare (less than 0.5% in the trials).

Although both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines employ "mRNA" technology, which is the first time this has been used in a vaccine, it is not the first time we've ever used the technology. In fact, mRNA technology has been studied since the 1990s. The science, research, and trial design surrounding the two vaccines were all sound, and it's exciting to know that two independent drug companies had nearly identical efficacy results. If anything, this is the future of vaccine production — it is synthesized (there are no fetal cells involved), highly targeted, and relatively easy to produce and ramp up in scale.

The only way to protect society is to encourage widespread adoption of the COVID vaccines. The sooner we develop herd immunity — with the help of vaccines — the sooner we can start to resume normal life. It is imperative we vaccinate as many people as possible.

The vaccine is a marvel of human ingenuity, medical progress, and science. These are things that have helped us nearly eradicate polio, smallpox, measles, and most recently, hepatitis C. We must encourage our patients and colleagues to stop paying attention to social media posts and to trust the science. Our healthcare workers deserve better and so do our patients.