Adverse events occurring post-covid-19 vaccination among healthcare professionals - a mixed method study

Mahapatra, Soumya; Nagpal, Ruchi; Marya, C.M.; Taneja, Pratibha; Kataria, Sakshi

BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are at the front line of the nation’s fight against COVID-19 and are always at a greater risk of contracting contagious disease. But amidst the crisis, the vaccines were not accepted by all the HCPs due to adverse events occurring post-COVID-19 vaccination. Hence the present study was designed to assess adverse events occurring among HCPs post-COVID-19 vaccination both quantitatively and qualitatively. METHOD: Sequential mixed-method approach was employed. A cross-sectional E-survey was conducted among the healthcare professionals of a North Indian college and hospital. The second phase included a semi-structured qualitative interview of the participants who were willing to participate. RESULTS: Among all the HCPs with age groups ranging from 20-70 years, majority of them experienced pain at the site of injection (88.8%-100%) followed by tiredness (87.7%-60%) and body ache (86.6%-40%) post-vaccination. There is an increased frequency of adverse events in females as compared to males. Qualitative findings are summarised in three major domains i.e vaccine adverse effects, fear and hesitancy for vaccines and vaccine acceptance. CONCLUSION: Short term adverse events of COVISHIELD vaccine were very few and were mild in severity yet interviews showed hesitancy of study participants for vaccination.