Virginia man, 74, says ‘skin peeled off’ in ‘rare’ reaction to Covid-19 vaccine, doctor stresses rash ‘treatable’
WARNING: Graphic photos of the rare and treatable reaction to COVID-19 vaccine released by Dr Fnu Nutan with VCU Health inside
A Virginia man was hospitalized this month after suffering a severe skin reaction following the receiving of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. However, it was a rare case that should not put people off receiving their doses, a doctor stated.
Images released by the VCU Health Dermatology showed the man suffering from a deep red rash across his calves and legs, with flakey skin stretching across his back. Fnu Nutan, a dermatology hospitalist at Virginia Commonwealth University Health, was on the team assigned to treat 74-year-old patient Richard Terrell. He is believed to be the first person to have experienced the specific skin reaction to the vaccine. "I want to reassure people we have seen worse skin reactions in patients with Covid... this reaction is recognizable and treatable," Dr Nutan told Newsweek.
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“I began to feel a little discomfort in my armpit and then a few days later I began to get an itchy rash, and then after that, I began to swell and my skin turned red,” Terrell told the WRIC. But soon the rash covered his entire body, Terrell said. “It all just happened so fast. My skin peeled off. It was stinging, burning and itching. Whenever I bent my arms or legs, like the inside of my knee, it was very painful where the skin was swollen and was rubbing against itself."
Terrell went to the emergency room at the hospital, where doctors determined that he had experienced an adverse reaction to the vaccine, WRIC reported. “We ruled out all the viral infections, we ruled out Covid-19 itself, we made sure that his kidneys and liver was okay, and finally we came to the conclusion that it was the vaccine that he had received that was the cause,” Dr Fnu Nutan told the outlet. She said that the medical episode could have been life-threatening if left untreated.
“Skin is the largest organ in the body, and when it gets inflamed like his was, you can lose a lot of fluids and electrolytes,” Nutan told the outlet. Still, Nutan emphasized that such reactions are extremely rare. “If you look at the risk for adverse reaction for the vaccine it’s really, really low,” she said. “We haven’t seen a great concern at all. I am a big proponent of the vaccine.”
The J&J/Janssen vaccine is recommended for people aged 18 years and older. According to VCU Health, "Instead of using mRNA, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a disabled adenovirus to deliver the instructions. This adenovirus is in no way related to the coronavirus. It is a completely different virus. Although it can deliver the instructions on how to defeat the coronavirus, it can’t replicate in your body and will not give you a viral infection."
It is also reported that Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be kept at essentially refrigerator temperatures for months, and it’s stable. The mRNA vaccines aren’t as stable and need super cold storage temperatures. Once they’re out of cold storage, you only have a small window of time to administer them.
It is also reported that: "The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was found to be 72% effective at preventing moderate to severe cases of Covid-19. Across the board, it was around 66%. I think part of the reason is that it was studied later in the pandemic. Now there are more of these variants out there. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was less effective in South Africa, where one of the variants has appeared. It was 57% in South Africa. I think if you were to test the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines now, they might be less effective because of the variants."