On the issue of the safety of domestic vaccines against new coronavirus infection in medical workers

Abstract

A necessary condition for combating the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) was the mass immunization of the population. Since any immunobiological drug can lead to the development of adverse reactions of the human body, it is necessary to characterize adverse events in the post-vaccination period. The aim of the study was to assess the frequency of registration of post-vaccination reactions in medical personnel of multidisciplinary hospitals when using vaccines against COVID-19, approved for use in the Russian Federation. An anonymous questionnaire was developed, using which 2,989 medical workers from Moscow, Moscow, Tula, Vladimir, and Kaluga regions were interviewed between December 2021 and February 2022. It was found that the overwhelming majority of medical professionals rated the tolerability of vaccines against COVID-19 as good and satisfactory. No serious adverse effects of immunization have been identified. There were short-term post-vaccination reactions, manifested in an increase in body temperature, headache, general weakness, myalgia and arthralgia, as well as fever, pain, swelling, itching at the injection site. In more than 82 % of cases, the above reactions developed within the first three days after vaccination. When comparing the results of a retrospective one-stage cross-sectional online study (n = 6032) with the data we obtained, a comparable frequency of post-vaccination reactions was revealed. Thus, the study established good tolerability and low frequency of post-vaccination reactions during immunization against COVID-19.