The Health Ministry says 0.72% of people receiving the coronavirus vaccine in Costa Rica have reported side effects, with headaches, arm pain and fever being the most common.
Since December 24, the country’s National Pharmacovigilance Commission has analyzed 2,615 “Events Supposedly Attributable to Vaccination and Immunization” related to the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.
Any possible events related to the AstraZeneca vaccine have not yet been analyzed, because that formula was first administered here this week.
Of the tracked events, 71% correspond to women, primarily between 30 and 39 years old. The most common side effects, in order, are: headache, arm pain, fever and muscle aches.
Thirteen adverse reactions were classified as “serious” by Costa Rican authorities. They include four people with multiple comorbidities who died in the days or weeks after receiving the vaccine.
Those four in detail:
- Two cases are considered “conditional,” which means that while the factors that caused the death have not been firmly established, the “effect of the vaccine” is not believed to have been a factor.
- Two cases were classified as “unlikely,” which means they “do not meet the criteria for establishing a causal relationship with the vaccine.”
Of the nine remaining cases of recovered or recovering patients, the Health Ministry detailed them as follows:
- Five events that were “probably” related to the vaccine.
- One event that was “possibly” related to the vaccine, though the patient had other factors that may have caused it.
- Three “conditional” cases where the vaccine is not believed to have been a causing factor.
Costa Rica has administered at least 700,000 doses of the vaccine. More than 3,100 people in Costa Rica have died related to Covid-19, and 284 people are in intensive care as of Wednesday afternoon.
