What to Expect

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Anchor lead: When you get the Sars-CoV2 vaccine, what should you expect? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Are the vaccines currently in use against Sars-CoV2 associated with more side effects than other types of vaccines? Andrew Pekosz, a vaccine expert at Johns Hopkins, explains.

Pekosz: If you compare it to the flu vaccine it seems to be a little bit more, we use the technical term ‘reactogenic.’ What that means is you’re a little bit more sore at the site of injection, a few hours later or a day later. You can get a little bit of redness and tenderness in that area, for a couple days. Some people have spiked a fever, but compared to the placebo group, those changes are significant but not to an overly concerning level. So it’s really just the symptoms that we often attribute to your immune system actually kicking in and doing its job.   :31

The most recent data from the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System or VAERS does not find a large number of severe reactions among the 3 million or so people who have received the vaccines in the US. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.