There have been few complaints of extreme symptoms or reactions after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine in Utah. But there is a way to report them to the CDC. Photo: screen grab KSL TV.
SALT LAKE CITY — More than one million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Utah. And there have been relatively few people who report an unexpected reaction or adverse effects aside from soreness, drowsiness, and headache.
If you do experience a severe reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want to know about it. By using the agency’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, you can do just that.
“The CDC are the ones that do the follow-up,” said Rich Lakin, Immunization Program Manager at the Utah Department of Health who spoke with KSL TV reporter Morgan Wolfe for her story. If the CDC sees a report coming from Utah, they’ll notify local officials.
Wolfe reports that five Utahns have submitted reports to the VAERS webpage, claiming the death of a family member was due to the COVID-19 vaccine. More than 180 Utahns have filed other reports on the site.
“Vaccine side effects are very rare. For every one million MMR vaccine that goes out, there is one person per one million that has a severe allergic reaction,” Lakin told Wolfe.
Utah’s COVID-19 cases continue a downward trend, with no deaths reported on Sunday and only about 400 new cases reported on Tuesday. Lakin attributes the good numbers to an increasingly successful vaccine rollout.
COVID-19 coronavirus spreads person to person, similar to the common cold and the flu. So, to prevent it from spreading:
Utah’s Coronavirus Information
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Utah Coronavirus Information Line – 1-800-456-7707
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention