(Reuters) – A top U.S. official said on Wednesday that Americans with known severe allergic reactions may not be candidates for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, after the United Kingdom said two people with severe allergies experienced serious reactions to the Pfizer vaccine on the first day of widespread vaccinations in the country.
“My expectation is… that tomorrow this will be a part of the consideration and as in the UK, the expectation would be that subjects with known severe allergic reactions should not take the vaccine until we understand exactly what happened here,” said Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for U.S. efforts on coronavirus vaccines.
Britain’s medicine regulator said it was changing its guidance to warn people with a history of significant allergies to vaccines, medicine and food to not get Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.
(Reporting by Carl O’Donnell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
