Four high school students have suffered post-vaccination anaphylaxis, with two of them having been hospitalized, after getting inoculated against COVID-19 in Vietnam’s northern province of Bac Giang on Wednesday.

The prognosis of one of them was very poor.

The two children with more severe reactions have been treated at Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi after they and other students at two high schools in Bac Giang's Son Dong District received the first doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday morning, according to Nguyen Thi Thu Huong, deputy director of the Bac Giang Department of Health.

During the vaccination process, four students at these two schools showed signs of dizziness, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, and pale skin due to anaphylaxis.

“These are undesirable complications due to the body’s reactions to the vaccine,” Huong said. 

“Two of the children suffered grade-3 reactions.

“Right after the incident, the Son Dong District Medical Center gave them first aid on the spot, while the Bac Giang Department of Health sent doctors and nurses from Bac Giang General Hospital to Son Dong to give further support.

“After that, we transferred the two children to Bach Mai Hospital for treatment.”

The two children with severe complications have been put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), or outside-the-body life support.

As of Friday afternoon, one of them had their complications reduce, while the other was still in a very serious condition.

Meanwhile, the other two students in the four are in stable health and are being monitored at the Son Dong District Medical Center, according to Huong.

Bac Giang authorities have launched a campaign to vaccinate 173,977 children from 12 to 17 years old against COVID-19.

A nurse tends to people suffering anaphylaxis after receiving the second doses of Vero Cell COVID-19 vaccine at Thanh Hoa General Hospital in Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, November 2021. Photo: Ha Dong / Tuoi Tre

On Friday afternoon, the Department of Health of north-central Thanh Hoa Province also said that ten local adults, who had suffered reactions after the injections of Vero Cell COVID-19 vaccine earlier this week, had their health conditions improved.

They were among a group of workers at Kim Viet Shoe Company that had been vaccinated with the second doses of Vero Cell COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday in Thanh Hoa’s Nong Cong District.

A number of the workers suffered severe reactions within 30 minutes after their vaccinations.

Four of them died of anaphylaxis while ten others have been treated by medical experts from Bach Mai Hospital at Thanh Hoa General Hospital.

After three days of treatment, the ten were in relatively stable condition on Friday afternoon. 

They do not need oxygen support and are able to move on their own. 

Their test results were also within normal limits. 

With this health development, they are expected to be discharged from the hospital in the next few days.

Following the four deaths after the vaccinations, health authorities in Thanh Hoa halt the administration of Vero Cell vaccine jabs from batch B2021103398 pending the Ministry of Health’s guidelines on handling the batch.

They also sent samples of the doses in question to the National Institute for Control of Vaccines and Biologicals for testing.

Thanh Hoa has recorded some 2,100 COVID-19 cases since the fourth coronavirus wave flared up in Vietnam in late April, including around 1,100 recoveries and 12 deaths, according to the provincial health department’s statistics.

More than 2.4 million vaccine shots have been given in the province, which has a population of 3.6 million, according to the national COVID-19 vaccination portal.

Health workers in Nong Cong District had administered over 10,000 out of the 29,900 doses of Vero Cell COVID-19 vaccine planned for its current inoculation round before the four fatalities.

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