Transcript of video
In your view, Professor Tobias Welte, how long will it take to get more long term safety data on coronavirus vaccines? Including data on the very rare, one in a million kind of side effects that you mentioned? That happened in the influenza vaccine, like narcolepsy. What would be the observation period that scientists need to go back to the past and look at the people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 to assess long-term risks of side effects? This is an ongoing process. So you could be more sure about the safety of coronavirus vaccines after six to nine months, after the first round of vaccination. So for the people who had been involved in the clinical studies, this will be in April or May 2021. And then for those vaccinated in the US in the UK, it will be around summertime 2021. Nevertheless, the process of reporting vaccine safety data will last longer and will last for years. One crucial point is how good reporting of side effects is. And this is a little bit related to the reporting systems and the IT technology used in different countries. And this is also an ongoing development. So I think mainly if younger people are vaccinated, app-based systems to report vaccine side effects could be a solution to get more data in. The more side effects data is reported, the better our evidence becomes. Yet another reason for people who are not in significant immediate danger of severe or fatal Coronavirus disease still to be vaccinated. Because the world is in it together, at least most of the world. From short-term vaccine safety perspectives, chest and breathing discomfort is one of the expected short term side effects after vaccinations, including COVID-19 vaccination. From a personal perspective, I participated in a clinical trial of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals. So it’s an adenovirus 26 based vaccine if I’m correct. But it’s a human adenoviral based vaccine. COVID-19 vaccine injection. I assume that I got a vaccine and not a placebo because I had some mild overnight fever and joint pains. But one of the first symptoms I had, which was very unusual for me, was a kind of chest discomfort. It was not a difficulty breathing, but it was clear discomfort, discomfort in the lungs. Mild breathing discomfort is a common occurrence in vaccines; why lungs react so fast to vaccines? What is the potential mechanism of lung reactions to vaccination? It’s not, in general, a side effect of vaccination. But it’s a very specific reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine. If you look at the symptoms of COVID-19, the three main ones are fatigue, fever, and chest tightness. And what you describe is a typical chest tightness, which normally is a plural reaction to the virus. And it seems to be that we see the same with the vaccine, but it’s normally one to three days. You feel a little bit like having a cold, getting a cold, and then it disappears without any further symptoms. It is also specifically related to as a pleural reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine. So people shouldn’t be concerned if they feel something like that, it will pass away. It’s important that we, as physicians and as responsible physicians for the vaccination, explained this before administering the coronavirus vaccine to the patients to make sure they accepted [this short-term side effect]. Very important point. Very important point. Your audio, interestingly, improved significantly. I don’t know if you use a different microphone. That’s good. That’s good. That’s very interesting.