Single-centre descriptive study of adverse events reported after anti-COVID vaccination

Abstract

Introduction: In Italy, approximately 80.5% of the population has completed the primary anti-COVID vaccination cycle with approximately 141 million doses administered. With the introduction of new measures to counter the spread of COVID-19, including compulsory vaccination for certain categories of people, the population expressed fears about the safety and adverse effects of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Several factors, such as gender and age, could have influenced the outcomes associated with the vaccine. Our single-centre work seeks to provide such evidence with respect to Pfizer/BioNTech’s BNT162b2 (Comirnaty) and AstraZeneca’s AZD1222 (Vaxzevria) vaccines. Materials and Methods: Single-centre descriptive study carried out on a sample of subjects who underwent anti-COVID vaccination at the ‘San Giovanni di Dio e Ruggi d’Aragona’ AOU vaccination centre in Salerno. Patients who reported a suspected adverse reaction after receiving a dose of vaccine were included in the study. The regional vaccine platform SORESA and the VigiFarmaco portal were used to collect the data. Results: During the period covered by the study, 126,928 doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine were administered. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine group comprised 124,138 administrations. The AstraZeneca vaccine group consisted of 2,790 administrations. 287 post-vaccination adverse reaction reports entered in the National Pharmacovigilance Network were considered. In most of the reactions reported, for both vaccines considered, the symptomatology was attributable to local reactions at the injection site. At the systemic level, however, we noted the prevalence of non-specific events such as fever, headache and diffuse arthromyalgia. Conclusions: Based on our results and comparison with the literature, the data collected on the vaccines considered in the study suggest a favourable safety profile for their large-scale use. The rate of minor adverse events turned out to be low, with similarly reassuring data compared to serious adverse events, such as not to justify hesitation towards vaccination for COVID-19 disease control.