While the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 continues to be deployed in France, the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran announced to the National Assembly, that for the moment, only one case of an adverse effect of an allergic nature was reported out of the 138,000 French vaccinated. Let’s do a check in.
One case of an allergic adverse reaction reported in France
Heard in the National Assembly this Tuesday, January 12, 2021 by the Social Affairs Committee, the Minister of Health returned in detail to the French vaccine strategy against Covid-19. We thus learn that of the 138,000 French people who received their first dose of the vaccine, ” we have […] in the country one case of an allergic adverse reaction which corresponds to the adverse effects observed abroad “. To which he added “ the outcome was favorable and the consequences simples ”.
However, the French Federation of Allergology recently declared that “ patients with severe drug or food allergy can be vaccinated with Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine “. According to her, the contraindication concerns only patients allergic to one of the ingredients of the vaccine.
One case of allergy per 100,000 people
While in the United Kingdom, two cases of severe allergy had raised questions last December, the day after the start of the vaccination campaign with the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, the American health authorities, they indicated a few ago days, that one in about 100,000 people (or 21 in 1.8 million injections) had a severe allergic reaction after receiving a dose of the vaccine in the United States. This is why Olivier Véran specified during his hearing that the frequency of this undesirable effect corresponds to what has been observed abroad, with approximately 1 case per 100,000 people.
As a reminder, one of the hypotheses to explain allergic reactions in England, the United States and now in France, could be the presence of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in vaccines. It is a substance used in many common products such as laxatives, shampoos and toothpaste.
