Your guide to side effects: What you can expect after a Covid-19 jab
11 May 2021
Medical workers wait for passengers inside a South Africa Health Department mobile coronavirus testing unit at O.R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, South Africa. Photographer: Guillem Sartorio/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In less than a week, on 17 May, the health department says South Africa will start to vaccinate people aged 60 years and older, as well as 700 000 healthcare workers not covered by the country’s Covid-19 vaccine implementation study, Sisonke.
Two jabs will be used: Pfizer’s vaccine in metros and Johnson and Johnson’s (J&J) shot in rural districts.
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.)