No one in South Africa has died from getting a Covid-19 vaccine, shows a new report from medicine regulator the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority. No one in South Africa has died from getting a Covid vaccine, shows a new report from medicine regulator the SA Health Products Regulatory Aut.
Vaccine safety: Inoculation shows significant reduction in deaths citizen.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from citizen.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
But how will the Pfizer and J&J shots affect you - can you, for instance, expect any side-effects?
The Sisonke trial, which uses the J&J jab, was, for example, recently paused for two weeks to investigate reports about rare blood clots linked to the vaccine.
So how do you know if a side-effect is something to be concerned about and how often are such symptoms likely to occur?
We break it down.
1. What is a side-effect?
To answer that, let’s take a quick refresher on how vaccines work. (A great place to start is to watch the first session of the Vaccine Science 101 course Bhekisisa and the Centre for Evidence-based Healthcare hosted in March.)
South Africa will pool its adverse effects data with reports from Nigeria, Ethiopia and Ghana to make sure no adverse effects for Covid-19 vaccinations are missed
The country has launched a mobile app which can be used to report adverse events - a call centre will be set up for phase two of South Africa’s vaccine roll-out
The country’s electronic health databases will be linked so that people who are hospitalised after vaccination and those who test positive for Covid-19 after inoculation will be picked up.
On 17 May, South Africa will start to roll out Covid vaccines to people over the age of 60, as well as the 700 000 health workers not covered by the country’s vaccine implementation study, the Sisonke trial.