Corona vaccinations: side effects

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Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Like all drugs, the new corona vaccines also have side effects - but rarely. Vaccination reactions that can be traced back to the body's (desired) immune response, such as headache, swelling at the injection site or fever, are more common. You can find out what other real side effects of a corona vaccination can occur and why late effects are hardly to be expected here.

Vaccine reactions - annoying, but quite normal

The corona vaccines that have been approved so far are generally well tolerated according to the current status. However, vaccination reactions occur in a relatively large number of people who have been vaccinated. Strictly speaking, these are not side effects, but the natural reactions of the immune system to the vaccination. These include, for example, flu-like symptoms that subside after two to three days, or pain and redness in the vaccination area.

In fact, such reactions are more common with the corona vaccines than with many other vaccinations. One possible reason: the immune system reacts very well to modern vaccines and perhaps better than to many classic vaccines. This has the advantage that they offer very good protection against infection and especially against severe disease. Increased and stronger vaccination reactions are therefore the unpleasant but harmless consequence of the good immune response.

If you do not observe any vaccination reactions after a corona vaccination, this does not mean that your vaccination reaction is only weak. In fact, most of them do not even notice any vaccination reactions, but they usually develop very good immune protection.

Frequent vaccination reactions and side effects

Symptoms that affect at least one but less than ten out of 100 people who are vaccinated are referred to as “common”. These include with the corona vaccination:

• fever
• headache
• mild to moderate pain and swelling at the injection site
• fatigue
• Pain in one limb

• dizziness
• chills
• muscle pain
• flu-like symptoms
• Rash
• diarrhea
• Palpitations
• Racing heart

For example, according to a study by the US Food and Drug Administration (CDS), after the administration of mRNA vaccines, about 50 percent of vaccinees reported symptoms after the first dose and about 69 percent after the second.

Such complaints occur more frequently in younger people after a corona vaccination. This is not surprising, because their immune system is more powerful than that of older people. The same applies to women, whose immune systems tend to be more active than that of men.

Allergic reaction

Allergic reactions to vaccinations are real side effects. They are generally not uncommon and can also occur after the corona vaccines have been administered.

However, severe allergic reactions as a side effect to these vaccines are very rare (“very rare” for side effects means they occur in less than 1 in 10,000 people who are vaccinated). The American disease protection agency CDC has published an initial report on the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine. According to this, severe allergic reactions (anaphylactic reactions) were only observed in 21 people out of 1.89 million vaccinated. 17 of them already had known allergies.

The general vaccination recommendation for Corona also applies to allergy sufferers. Anyone who has had a severe allergic reaction (regardless of the substance) in the past should discuss this with their doctor before vaccination. The Paul Ehrlich Institute also recommends that doctors observe allergy sufferers for at least 30 minutes for reactions after the corona vaccination.

In the event of an allergic shock, medical help can be provided quickly. As a result, those affected quickly recover. However, according to the current recommendation, they should not receive another dose of the corona vaccination.

Covid arm

Some people who have been vaccinated have a time lag - four to eleven days after the vaccination - in the vaccinated extremity: redness, swelling, itching, pain. Investigations of tissue samples (biopsies) have shown that this is an immune reaction in which the T cells in particular are involved, which only arise later in the course of the immune response. The symptoms are basically harmless and can be treated well by cooling and, if necessary, cortisone.

Cerebral vein thrombosis

In connection with the vaccines against corona, only a very rare but dangerous side effect has so far occurred, which has also been associated with individual deaths: so-called sinus vein thrombosis. These are blood clots that form in the veins of the meninges.

Such thromboses have been observed in connection with the corona vaccination mainly after the administration of the vector vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson - about ten times more frequently than with the mRNA vaccines. Experts suspect a "class effect" - the side effect could also occur with the Sputnik V vaccine, which is also vector-based.

Since sinus vein thrombosis occurs almost exclusively in younger people, the Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) currently recommends AstraZeneca and the vector vaccine from Johnson & Johnson only for people over the age of 60.

Younger people who currently do not have the opportunity to be vaccinated with one of the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech / Pfizer or Moderna, which are not suspect in this regard, can still have a vector vaccine after consulting their doctor. This can be useful if the personal risk of a severe course of a Sars-Cov-2 infection (e.g. due to heavy smoking, being very overweight or a serious lung disease) exceeds the risk of sinus vein thrombosis.

Unknown side effects?

Severe allergic reactions and cerebral vein thrombosis are the only serious side effects that can occur with a corona vaccination. And, as mentioned, they are very rare.

Inflammation of the heart muscle

There were also individual cases of cardiac muscle and pericardial inflammation, which occurred mainly in young men after a corona vaccination. Whether they can actually be traced back to the vaccination is still being investigated.

Facial swelling

Cases are also being examined in which individual vaccinated persons experienced facial swelling in connection with the mRNA vaccines from BioNTech / Pfizer. However, these only affected corresponding parts of the face of people who had previously had wrinkles plumped up using so-called fillers such as hyaluronic acid collagen. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is currently reviewing the connection.

It is rather unlikely that other very rare, especially serious side effects of the corona vaccination could be noticed later. In the meantime, millions of doses of corona vaccines have been administered worldwide - other very rare side effects would have been noticed by now.

It was different with previous vaccines. They were vaccinated on a less grand scale. Therefore, rare side effects were only noticed here within a much longer period of time.

Side effects occurring late?

Corona vaccines have only been inoculated on a large scale worldwide for a few months. All side effects registered so far occurred very soon after the individual vaccinations - within days and weeks, a maximum of a few months. Because of the short vaccination period, nothing is known about possible long-term side effects that only occur after years.

Other vaccines are also not known to have any serious health consequences that would only cease after years or decades. Such long-term side effects are generally unlikely with vaccinations:

In contrast to drugs, vaccines or their metabolic products do not accumulate in the body. We know from previous vaccinations that side effects usually appear after a few weeks or a few months at the latest.

This also applies to autoimmune reactions, for example. They can be triggered in genetically predisposed people by an infection, but in rare cases also by certain vaccinations. This can also be seen within a few months after vaccination.

As things stand today, it is unlikely that the currently approved corona vaccines will have side effects that occur late.

Vaccination-related deaths

Deaths related to the corona vaccinations are extremely rare. This also applies to the deaths related to cerebral vein thrombosis, which were explained above. It is becoming increasingly apparent that vector-based vaccinations can actually cause this complication. However, it is now also clear that unprotected people who contract Covid-19 develop cerebral vein thrombosis much more often than those who are vaccinated.

Separately, there are also other deaths related to the vaccinations. In the case of very old or frail people in particular, however, immediate death does not have to be caused by the vaccination, but can have a natural cause.

With these in particular, however, it cannot be ruled out that the vaccine reactions have overloaded the already very weakened body.

In any case, the following applies: every death in close temporal connection with a vaccination will be investigated by the authorities.

How are side effects recorded?

As with other vaccinations, all anomalies related to the corona vaccinations are first reported by the doctors to the responsible health department and from there to the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI).

Vaccinated persons themselves can also report unusual symptoms to the PEI that occur shortly after the vaccination. There is a separate registration form for this on the PEI website.

The PEI experts are examining whether the indicated symptoms occur more frequently among vaccinated people than would normally be expected. The detailed reports are publicly available on the website of the Paul Ehrlich Institute.

In addition, two percent of those vaccinated take part in a new, direct reporting process. Using the SafeVac 2.0 app, the voluntary participants should be asked about possible side effects within three or four weeks after each vaccination. In the twelve months after vaccination, they also regularly state whether they have become infected despite being vaccinated - this data helps to clarify the reliability and duration of vaccination protection.

Misunderstandings and fake news about side effects

Various misinformation has emerged in connection with the corona vaccination. We would like to correct this here.

No fertility risk

This is a particularly tragic hoax. Because there is increasing evidence that pregnant women even tend to contract Covid-19 more severely than non-pregnant women. Women who are planning a pregnancy could therefore particularly benefit from the vaccination. This also protects the child - during pregnancy and after birth through the maternal antibodies that are transferred to the child.

Apart from that, the vaccines only affect a few body cells in the area of ​​the puncture site - egg cells or sperm do not reach them.

Do corona vaccinations change the genetic makeup?

mRNA vaccines cannot change the human genome simply because they are structured differently. The injected gene snippets can therefore not be easily inserted into the human chromosomes. In addition, they do not even get into the cell nucleus, where the chromosomes are located, and are broken down in the cell after a few days.

The vector vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and Astrzeneca are equipped with DNA that is channeled into the cell nucleus. This task is carried out by adenoviruses ("cold viruses"). Unlike HIV, they do not integrate their genetic material into the cell's genetic material.

In theory, however, in very rare cases this could happen through a random process, known as heterologous recombination.

In this case, however, another protective mechanism would take effect: body cells in which the adenoviruses have penetrated present the virus proteins that have been smuggled in on their surface. This activates the immune system - the cells are then destroyed.

It is therefore extremely unlikely that corona vaccinations can change the human genome and thus cause cancer, for example.

The vaccines do not work - because people who are vaccinated also die

The currently available corona vaccinations offer a very high level of protection against severe courses of Covid-19. But they do not prevent 100 percent from being infected at all - no vaccination can do that. Therefore, among millions of people vaccinated, there are always those who get Covid-19 and possibly die as a result.

It should also be borne in mind that it takes weeks for the vaccination protection to fully build up. In this phase, the likelihood of a serious illness decreases increasingly. However, serious cases and deaths are also repeatedly reported - for example, within various nursing homes where a coronavirus outbreak occurred shortly after the vaccination.

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