Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines elicit an immune response to recognize and combat the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, as with all vaccines, they may cause side effects that are typically mild and short term. Objective: The aim of this review is to report and compare the most common adverse events experienced by COVID-19 vaccines, their incidence, and percentage. Methods: A systematic review was conducted based on eight large trials including a total of 89,009 participants. This review compares the incidence of the most common adverse events with three types of widely used vaccines AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Sinovac vaccines. Results: Sinovac vaccine showed the lowest incidence of all adverse events. AstraZeneca vaccine showed the highest percentage of fever, myalgia, headache, and local swelling at the site of injection with correlated percentage of 39.11%, 48.95%, 49.18% and 27.56%, respectively. On the other hand, Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine showed the highest incidence of fatigue and diarrhea events with correlated percentage of 53.53%, and 10.32%, respectively. Conclusion: The current study showed that the most frequent adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines are fever, headache, fatigue, and myalgia. Sinovac vaccine is safer and more tolerated than AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Generally, common adverse events among COVID-19 vaccines are minor and could be managed by over-the-counter medications.
Mostafa et al. (Fri,) studied this question.