A painful upper arm, a little weak feeling, that’s how the side effects of the corona vaccine stop for most people. But the second shot is yet to come for many. And doesn’t that cause more severe side effects?
Indeed, Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines reported more severe side effects after administration of the second dose. “With the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was made on the basis of a ‘cultivated’ cold virus, it is just the opposite. The complaints themselves are generally very similar: fever, fatigue, headache, nausea and chills,” explains vaccinologist Isabel Leroux-Roels (UZ Gent) at Het Laatste Nieuws.
The explanation for the difference is that an mRNA vaccine triggers the immune response by showing the body what the virus looks like. This happens again with the second shot, but your body has now been warned, which means it can react more violently. AstraZeneca’s vector vaccine makes your body a little bit sick, causing it to produce antibodies. With the second dose, the body is more used to the substances in the vaccine and reacts more mildly.
