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As the fastest inoculation campaign in history gathers pace, with 300m Covid-19 jabs already administered globally, reports of side-effects are inevitably surging. These range from life-threatening events such as thrombosis, which has prompted many European countries to suspend AstraZeneca jabs, to the minor short-term consequences such as flu-like symptoms, nausea and muscle pain that accompany all vaccines to a greater or lesser extent.
In the global rush to roll out vaccines, health authorities and pharmaceutical companies gave too little thought to how to handle all the adverse reaction reports that were bound to follow mass immunisation. The issue deserves priority attention now — to maintain public confidence, while avoiding overreaction to apparent side-effects that are not really a result of vaccinations. The vaccine manufacturers — and AstraZeneca in particular — have not helped their own cause. Better public communications and more transparency would help to reassure consumers.
AstraZeneca insists there is no scientific justification for precautionary suspensions of its vaccine across Europe because of a possible association with dangerous blood clotting. Many experts also suggest this is coincidental. They deploy statistics to show that the number of dangerous events soon after vaccination is no higher than would be expected by chance when the jabs are given to millions of people.
Although health ministries that have paused vaccinations say a suspected link must be investigated to maintain confidence, their actions risk the opposite effect. The European public has already read so much negative publicity about the vaccine, beginning with misplaced doubts on its effectiveness in older people, that the latest news will seem to confirm their suspicions, even if the scientific proof is lacking.
Beyond any effect on vaccine hesitancy, it seems strange to give more weight to an unproven — and, biologists say, unlikely — link between the AZ jab and blood clots than to the fact that suspending vaccination will kill people who would otherwise have been protected from severe Covid-19.
Even if, in a worst-case scenario, further investigations prove that the jabs can cause rare, lethal side-effects, that would not necessarily justify an end to vaccination, but an examination of risks and benefits. It would be necessary to compare estimated deaths and serious illness resulting from the jabs with the additional deaths and disease expected from Covid-19 cases that vaccination would have prevented.
Far more frequent than any serious reactions are the minor if still unpleasant short-term side-effects associated with all vaccines as the immune system responds. Clinical trials of the current Covid-19 jabs showed that more than one in 10 people suffer symptoms such as a sore arm or flu-like illness.
Though vaccination centres usually give out leaflets listing common side-effects, these have not generally been mentioned in public health messages exhorting people to be vaccinated. Many recipients have been surprised to feel ill afterwards. Their stories have spread among friends and family, leading to unfounded suspicions that the vaccines have more side-effects than authorities are letting on. With younger people’s stronger immune systems making them more susceptible to side-effects, it might be wise for health messaging to prepare them better for a temporary adverse reaction.
But the priority now is to sort out swiftly what may be a damaging overreaction to extremely rare serious events — which may or may not be a consequence of mass Covid-19 vaccination. Many lives will depend on it.
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