ABSTRACT
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was one of the countries earliest affected by the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and had taken precautions including compulsory COVID-19 vaccination. Both the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine (Oxford AstraZeneca) and the BNT162b2 vaccine (Pfizer) were approved by the Saudi Ministry of Health, followed by mRNA-1273 (Moderna), all of which were used for population-wide vaccination. This study aimed to assess the short-term side effects following the COVID-19 vaccinations among participants who had received all three doses in the western region of Saudi Arabia. An online survey was distributed to the participants who received either BNT162b2, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, or mRNA-1273 vaccines, and the type of side effects and their severity were evaluated. Fatigue and headache, pain at the site of the injection and muscle pain were the most common side effects in all three doses. However, the severity depending on the type of vaccination was significant only for the first and second dose, but not the third dose. In contrast, there was a higher percentage of participants who encountered severe side effects from the third dose compared to the first and second. Nevertheless, the majority of participants described all three doses' side effects to be moderately severe. A future evaluation could be made to access the individual types of vaccination and compare between the side effects of the BNT162b2, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, and mRNA-1273 vaccines specifically for the booster dose.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: To investigate the side effects of Pizer- BioNTech mRNA (BNT162b2) and Spikevax (mRNA- 1273) Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines on adolescents in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. METHODS: A cross-sectional study using an online questionnaire was carried out among COVID-19 vaccine adolescent recipients in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After receiving at least one dose of each vaccine, general and demographic data were collected, and vaccine-related side effects were evaluated. RESULTS: The final sample consisted of 604 participants with a majority age group of 16-17 years old. Approximately 89.1% of the study participants were female. Most participants reported pain at the injection site (85.1% 1st dose, 79.8% 2nd dose), feeling tired, and headache (58.6% 1st dose, 64.2% 2nd dose). Moreover, we found that patients who took the first dose and had a chronic disease had 2.4 times higher odds of having menstrual disorder (females) than non-chronic disease patients (p=0.03) and 4.5 times higher odds of exhibiting breathing congestion (p=0.01). In addition, patients with chronic disease had 2.4 times higher odds of exhibiting muscle and joint pain and dizziness than non-chronic disease patients (p=0.01, p=0.02). Males were less likely to have dizziness after the first dose than females (OR=0.26, p=0.01). CONCLUSION: This study investigates the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines among adolescents in Riyadh. As a result, this study creates a database to inform people about the risk of experiencing side effects based on their gender, age, and the vaccine type; more investigation is needed to better understand the link between risk factors and the development of adverse effects.