The Safety Profile of COVID-19 Vaccines: A Narrative Review

Homa  Seyedmirzaei; Parnian  Shobeiri; Mehdi  Mohammadi; Mohammad  Zarei

doi:10.18502/igj.v7i3.17878

Homa Seyedmirzaei Children’s Medical Center Hospital, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Parnian Shobeiri Children’s Medical Center Hospital, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Mehdi Mohammadi Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
Mohammad Zarei John B. Little Center for Radiation Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/igj.v7i3.17878

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Vaccines; Safety; Side Effect

Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic inflicted a considerable burden on health systems and individuals world-wide. Thus, scientists intended to propose beneficial treatments and vaccines to fight against this virus.However, vaccination remained the only effective way to reduce death and hospitalization due to COVID-19infection. To date, about five proposed COVID-19 vaccines have been approved as WHO emergency uselistings (EUL). Yet, their safety profile needs the following actions to be revealed: (1) more follow-up registrysystems and (2) global clinical trials in various countries in a period that they are experiencing a peak.By searching keywords 'COVID-19' and 'vaccination' in PubMed and Scopus databases, we aimed to sum-marize the current evidence in the literature regarding the safety profile (i.e., local and systemic adverseevents) of ten COVID-19 vaccines: (1) Pfizer/BioNTech, (2) Moderna, (3) Sputnik V, (4) Bharat, (5) CanSi-no, (6) Sinovac, (7) AstraZeneca, (8) Johnson & Johnson, (9) Novavax, and (10) Sinopharm. Moreover, wedemonstrated the data on the safety of heterologous schedules of these vaccines alongside further consider-ations in people with comorbidities and particular circumstances.Most of the COVID-19 vaccine adverse effects possess a mild-to-moderate, self-limiting nature. However,special circumstances such as severe hyper-sensitivity necessitate the use of an alternate COVID-19 vaccine.Vaccination is the only way to exit the global pandemic, and its benefits outweigh its adverse effects. Mean-while, people should be aware of the signs of the probable rare, severe reactions to the vaccine.