People injected with Moderna COVID -19 vaccine reports more side effects

People who receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine say they have more side effects than people who get the Pfizer/ BioNTech shots.

The study analyzed reports collected through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention program called v-safe. It’s a text message-based program designed to track side effects in vaccine dose, people who enrol are prompted to fill out a daily survey about any symptoms, like fatigue or arm pain.

Over 3,600,000 people who got their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine before February 21st enrolled in v-safe and checked in at least once. Around 70 per cent of those people said they had some kind of injection site reaction, like pain or swelling, and half had a more generalized reaction like fatigue or chills. For both, people who got a Moderna shot were more likely to have a side effect — 73 per cent had an injection site reaction, compared with 65 per cent of people who had a Pfizer / BioNTech dose. Around 51 per cent of Moderna recipients had full-body symptoms, compared with 48 per cent of people who got Pfizer / BioNTech.

The gap widened after the second dose. About 1.4 million people completed those check-ins. Almost 82 per cent of people getting their second Moderna shot had injection site pain versus just under 69 per cent of people with Pfizer / BioNTech. Overall, 74 per cent of people said they had general reactions after their Moderna shot, compared with 64 per cent of people getting Pfizer / BioNTech. The biggest difference was for chills, which were experienced by 40 per cent of people taking Moderna and only 22 per cent of people taking the Pfizer / BioNTech shot.