HOUSTON – Dorinda Beal, 73, received the Moderna vaccine on Jan. 17 at NRG Park in Houston. She said about 14 minutes after being vaccinated she started seeing my adverse effects.
“My face started tingling. My nose went numb. My mouth was numb, and I had a little trouble swallowing,” Beal said.
Beal said she was immediately checked out and monitored by doctors and nurses on-site at NRG.
“They were concerned because my blood pressure went so high and my heart rate went so high,” said Beal.
Eventually, Beal was released and cleared to go home but said she struggled to sleep and had trouble breathing over the next few days. She scheduled an appointment with her primary physician.
“My blood pressure was still elevated and the heart rate was still fast and she had told me I had an adverse reaction and not to take the second dose,” Beal said.
Since Dec. 29, 2020, nearly 250,000 vaccines have been administered in Texas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
During that same time frame, 287 events were reported to VAERS in Texas.
Eleven of the events were classified as serious. This included the death of an 84-year-old woman and another person who reported they were permanently disabled. The rest of the serious cases reported spent four days or less in the hospital.
UTHealth expert Dr. Luis Ostrosky talked to KPRC about the probability of an adverse effect.
“For perspective, early data showed that approximately one-of-100,000 people that got Pfizer got anaphylactic reactions and one-in-400,000 people in Moderna. That’s much lower than you would get from penicillin,” said Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an Infectious Disease Specialist at UTHealth.