A 67-year-old man who suffered a suspected heart attack after being vaccinated for Covid-19 has been hospitalised.
Commenting on the first adverse reaction in the city-wide inoculation drive, the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre (NCRCC) announced that the man – who has not been named – had his first BioNTech mRNA jab at the Conde de São Januário Hospital Centre on Friday after being assessed as healthy.
The man first suffered pain on the left side of his chest on Tuesday, which intensified on Wednesday when he went to hospital.
An electrocardiogram showed that the man was suffering myocardial ischaemia, The Macau Daily Post reported.
The patient’s condition remains stable and he will undergo a cardiac catheterisation. Health Bureau officials are due to investigate the case today.
The Covid-19 vaccination drive started on 9 February and inoculations for non-resident workers started on Wednesday with Sinopharm jabs, while jabs with BioNTech will start on Sunday. Out of Macao’s total population of 683,100, just over 24,000 have had their first of two inoculations.
A spokesman for the NCRCC said that all cases of illness or death that occur after vaccination are defined by the World Health Organization as “adverse events after vaccinations”. Adverse events which occur after inoculations have not necessarily been caused by the vaccines.
The NCRCC pointed out that there are four kinds of adverse events after vaccinations:
1) vaccine reactions – such as redness, swelling, heat and pain as well as allergic reactions
2) reactions related to immunisation carried out the wrong way – whether by errors in the vaccines’ production process or injection process
3) reactions related to vaccination anxiety, and
4) coincidental events – illness after vaccinations which would have happened anyway
