[ad_1]
LONDON: British health officials warned on Wednesday that anyone with a history of significant allergic reactions should not receive the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid jab for now.
The warning came after two members of the state’s National Health Service who were among the first to receive the vaccine Tuesday suffered allergic reactions and needed treatment.
NHS England Medical Director Stephen Powis said both people, who had a history of reactions, were now recovering well.
The independent Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has now warned that “people with a significant history of allergic reactions do not receive this vaccine” as a precaution, he added.
“Significant” allergic reactions include those to drugs, foods or vaccines, according to the MHRA.
Thousands of Britons became the first in the Western world to receive an approved Covid vaccine on Tuesday when the NHS began the largest vaccination campaign since its inception in 1948.
The vaccine is given in two doses, 21 days apart. Those over 80 and health and social care personnel are the first in line to take the hit in the national deployment.
Britain has received some 800,000 doses of the vaccine in the first batch of an order of 40 million. Up to four million doses are expected by the end of December.
Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said Tuesday that he understood global concerns about the speed with which drug companies have produced Covid-19 vaccines.
But he insisted that no corners have been cut.
The vaccine had been tested “in exactly the same way that we are testing any vaccine that is circulating around,” he told a virtual press conference in Geneva.
Pfizer said the MHRA had informed it of the allergic reactions, but said that during Phase 3 trials of more than 40,000 people, the vaccine was “generally well tolerated without serious safety concerns.”
