The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has reportedly begun investigating allergic reactions to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in several states. During a recent interview, Peter Marks of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said that the agency is probing five reactions at this time.
“We are working hand in hand with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we’ve actually been working closely with our United Kingdom colleagues, who of course reported the allergic reaction. I think we’ll be looking at all the data we can from each of these reactions to sort out exactly what happened, and we’ll also be looking to try to understand which component of the vaccine might be helping to produce them,” Marks said.
“I think we have at this point the right … mitigation strategy with the availability of treatment for a severe allergic reaction being at the ready, and we’ll continue to monitor it very closely.”
As of now, it is unclear what could be causing these allergic reactions. However, Marks did hint that a chemical known as polyethylene glycol, which is present in the Pfizer vaccine, “could be the culprit.”
“We’ll obviously be monitoring very closely what’s going on. We’re working very closely with the CDC on these, and there have been meetings between the CDC and FDA pretty much every day this week making sure we’re keeping very close track of what’s going on,” he added.
At this time, developers of the recently approved Moderna COVID-19 vaccine have not yet explained if polyethylene glycol is available in their new treatment.
