ONLY 51 cases (5.2%) of 984 adverse event following immunisation cases for Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, which is equal to a rate of 0.005 reports for every 1,000 doses, are classified as serious, according to health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said, overall, the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency’s (NPRA) Aefi division’s reporting system received 24,111 Aefi reports, including 984 reports involving booster doses.

“Monitoring of Aefi reports received by the NPRA so far concluded that the trend and rate of Aefi reporting relating to booster doses did not show any increase from what was seen during the administration of the primer doses.

“The same reporting trend has been reported by other countries conducting Covid-19 booster immunisation programmes,” he said in a statement today.

He said fever, pain at the injection site, headaches and fatigue were among the more common adverse effects reported by vaccine recipients.

Vaccine recipients who have adverse effects can make an Aefi report through notification on the MySejahtera app for effects listed in the app in addition to filing an online report by filling in a form such as consumer side effect reporting form (Conserf) at the NPRA website.

Meanwhile, Noor Hisham said new Covid-19 cases reported today rose to 4,116 compared to 4,046 yesterday, bringing the total of infections to 2.83 million as of noon today.

From that total, 39 cases (0.9%) were category three, four and five while 4,077 cases (99.1%) were category one and two.

“A total of 498 cases were import cases while 3,618 were local cases. 141 cases required intensive care treatment while 62 cases needed respiratory support,” he added.

There were 2,858 recoveries today, bringing the total to 2.75 million recoveries overall. Also, nine new clusters were recorded, with 225 clusters still active. – Bernama, January 22, 2022.