A UK study analysed participants who underwent mix-and-match vaccines with two showing the most side effects. Fever was the most reported side effect resulting from these combination vaccines.
“These are the type of reactions we do expect with vaccines, and they are more or less the same types of reactions that you’re seeing with the standard schedules,” said Matthew Snape, the trial’s chief investigator and associate professor in paediatrics and vaccinology at the University of Oxford.
“It’s just that they’re occurring more frequently,” said professor Snape.
He added: “The best course of action remains getting two doses of the same vaccine.
“Large clinical trials have clearly demonstrated that this strategy reduces the chances of getting COVID-19.
“Your default should be what is proven to work.”
“We would expect that this signal … of higher reactions in the mixed schedules, would still come through, and [in] younger age groups there might be even more reactions,” prof Snape added.
“Reactions often relate to the stimulating of the innate immune response, so that fundamental part of the immune response sends an inflammatory signal.
“Whether or not this will relate to actually improved immune response, we don’t know yet.”