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A man suffered a rare allergic reaction to a dose of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. The event occurred in Virginia and caused a painful rash to spread all over the man’s body and peel off his skin. This is how doctors explained it.
Richard Terrell, 74, began suffering strange symptoms four days after receiving the drug. “I started to feel a little discomfort in my armpit and then a few days later I started to get an itchy rash. Then I started to swell and my skin became red,” he recalls.
The man detailed that eventually the rash covered his entire body: “It all happened so fast. My skin peeled off […] I felt stinging, burning and itching. Whenever I bent my arms or legs, like the inside of my knee, I would get a lot of pain from the inflamed skin rubbing against itself.”
Tarrell went to the medical service, where it was determined that she had experienced an adverse reaction to the vaccine.
“We ruled out all viral infections, and COVID-19 itself. We made sure his kidneys and liver were fine, and ultimately concluded that it was the vaccine he received that caused the reaction,” said Dr. FNU Nutan.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine relies on a viral vector, applying a technology already used by this company, in particular against the Ebola virus. In addition, it uses another attenuated virus as a carrier, transformed to add genetic instructions from a part of the virus responsible for COVID-19. Once it reaches the cells, it produces a protein typical of SARS-CoV-2, which allows the immune system to recognize it.
