Update on Side effects of COVID-19 vaccines in Switzerland
Update on Side effects of COVID-19 vaccines in Switzerland
Update on Side effects of COVID-19 vaccines in Switzerland
As of 20 Apr 2021, Swissmedic has evaluated 1485 reports of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADR) to COVID-19 vaccinations in Switzerland (in collaboration with the regional pharmacovigilance centres).
Of 1485 reports, 706 reports involve Pfizer/BioNTech’s Comirnaty®, while 761 are associated with Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine and the vaccine was not specified in 18 cases.
As of 18 April 2021, approximately 769,000 people have been fully vaccinated.
The majority of the reports concerned women (67.9%). Men were affected in 28.7% of cases, and there were a few cases (3.4%) where no gender was specified.
The average age of those affected was 64.8 years (range 16–101), with 41.6% aged 75 or over.
Update on Side effects of COVID-19 vaccines in Switzerland
537 (36.2%) cases are classified as serious and the average age was 68.5, and for reports temporally linked to death (n = 64) it was 82.0 years.
948 (63.8%) cases are classified as non-serious
The majority of the reports involved more than one reaction (a total of 3,851 reactions in the 1,485 reports, equating to an average of 2.6 reactions per report).
The most commonly reported reactions in the cases classified as serious were
- Fever (80)
- Shortness of breath (39)
- Headaches/migraine (37)
- Reactivation of shingles (34)
- Shivering (28), hypersensitivity (27)
- Anaphylactic reactions (13)
- Vomiting (28)
- Muscle pain (27)
- Malaise (25)
- Elevated blood pressure (25)
Since a single report generally involves more than one reaction, reactions such as fever or headache are reported in cases that are classified as serious overall as well as in non-serious cases.
Herpes zoster (shingles) was reported in 61 cases. Herpes zoster is caused by a reactivation of varicella-zoster viruses (VZV). The primary infection with VZV leads to chickenpox.
Risk factors for herpes zoster include immunosuppressive treatments, diabetes mellitus, female gender, psychological stress, and mechanical trauma.
The reports of adverse reactions received and analyzed to date do not alter the positive benefit-risk profile of the COVID-19 vaccines used in Switzerland.
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