Covid-19 vaccines may cause mild side effects, experts say

Covid-19 vaccines may cause mild side effects, experts say




Good morning! Elizabeth Cooney here, sitting in for Shraddha for the next few days. Let’s get started.

Covid-19 vaccines could come with a kick

Get ready: Some vaccines are more unpleasant to take than others, and Covid-19 vaccines may be among them. Early data from large clinical trials hint that these vaccines may carry a bit of a kick, experts tell STAT’s Helen Branswell. In vaccine parlance, they appear to be “reactogenic,” meaning they have induced short-term discomfort in a percentage of the people who have received them in clinical trials. This kind of discomfort includes headache, sore arms, fatigue, chills, and fever.

Other pandemic developments:

• Dozens of U.S. colleges intend to test students for the coronavirus this fall, but their strategies vary widely. Federal health officials discourage widespread testing on college campuses, but some researchers say it's necessary to prevent outbreaks.
• The U.S. military has increased health protection requirements in at least 21 bases in recent weeks, particularly across Texas and Florida, as the Covid-19 rate continues to spike among service members, more than doubling in the last month.
• Today President Trump is scheduled to tour Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in North Carolina, manufacturer of Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate, while Vice President Pence is expected in Miami to mark the start of the Moderna’s vaccine trial. Moderna said yesterday it got an additional $472 million from the federal government to support its efforts.
• Wearing a face covering to reduce Covid-19 transmission won’t instill a false sense of security, a review of 22 pre-pandemic studies of behavior during other respiratory infections concludes. There was no drop in hand-washing or sanitizing among those mask wearers, despite fears they would let their guard down.