The first corona vaccination: The time has come in Germany since December 2020.
A participant in the Pfizer and Biontech vaccine study reports.
In some countries, such as the UK, people have been able to get vaccinated against Covid-19 in general practitioners' practices since mid-December 2020.
Corona vaccination * has been possible in Germany since the end of December 2020.
Risk groups such as the elderly, the sick and healthcare professionals are the first to have the opportunity to get vaccinated.
The American nurse Kristen R. Choi was a study participant in a clinical corona vaccine test.
As part of the test, she was given two injections with the vaccine candidate from the Mainz-based company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer.
On the specialist portal Jama, Choi reports on the side effects that she has observed.
And warns of a wrong impression that could arise with many.
Kisten Choi scrolled through her Instagram feed in early August 2020 and stumbled upon an ad there.
It was about a vaccine study for which the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Biontech were looking for volunteers.
The nurse signed up and became part of the Phase III clinical trial of vaccine candidate BNT162b2.
During this phase, several thousand to tens of thousands of volunteers are vaccinated.
Research is being carried out into whether a new vaccine protects against infection and what possible side effects may occur.
As a nurse and employee at the School of Nursing at the University of California in Los Angeles, Choi was vaccinated twice against Corona as part of the clinical test: once in August and the second time in September.
Where she put away the first syringe well
,
she struggled with side effects after the second,
as she
writes
in a report on the specialist portal
Jama
.
But Choi did not regret her decision.
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Corona vaccination: "If I had to do it again, I would do it again immediately"
The first corona vaccination with the vaccine candidate BNT162b2 only resulted in one sore arm.
But after the second injection in September, the nurse did not feel well: “My arm hurt at the injection site, much more than the first time.
At the end of the day, I felt dizzy, shivered, sick, and had a raging headache.
I went to bed early and fell asleep straight away.
Around midnight I woke up feeling even worse - feverish and hypothermic, nauseous, dizzy and barely able to lift my arm from the muscle pain at the injection site
.
My temperature was 37.4 degrees Celsius.
I tossed and turned and hardly slept for the rest of the night ”.
The fever rose and in the morning the clinical thermometer showed 40.5 degrees Celsius: “That was the highest fever I can remember and it scared me.
I took paracetamol and drank a glass of water ”.
Choi contacted the clinical trial staff, who reassured them that many participants would react physically after the second injection.
She should continue to monitor her symptoms and report if something changes.
But during the day the fever subsided and the next morning all symptoms were gone, according to Choi in her report.
In the
Jama
publication, Kisten Choi lists the undesirable side effects of the Pfizer Biontech vaccine recorded in the research report that were observed in test subjects:
fatigue (75 percent), headache (67 percent), chills (33 percent), muscle pain (25 percent) ), Fever (17 percent), and joint pain (17 percent)
.
But despite the side effects that Choi has observed in herself, she would get vaccinated again: “I am absolutely of the opinion that everyone should get vaccinated,” she quotes Business Insider Choi: “What I experienced, although it did Wasn't really pleasant, was only temporary.
It wasn't an emergency, it passed within a day and if I had to do it again I would do it again in a heartbeat. "
No Covid-19 through vaccination - even if vaccination reaction can result in similar symptoms
It is normal for the body to be able to react to the vaccine, which in the case of the Pfizer Biontech preparation contains parts of the coronavirus genome in the form of a so-called messenger RNA.
Upon contact with this messenger RNA, the body produces proteins typical of the coronavirus that do not make you sick, but stimulate the immune system to produce corona antibodies.
“Our body has to activate its immune system so that it learns to fight the virus, that's the point of a vaccine,” says Choi: “And part of this activation means that we may experience symptoms like fever, chills, nausea - all of those Things that I have experienced ”.
However, this does not mean that you are sick with Covid-19 through the vaccination
- this is not possible because the vaccine does not contain any coronaviruses, but only tiny parts of the virus genome.
(jg) * Merkur.de belongs to the Germany-wide Ippen-Digital editorial network
.
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