When Mark Hooks volunteered to become the first man in Illinois to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, he already had educated himself about the shot and was fully prepared for the most common side effects: Low-grade fever. Body aches. Chills. Headaches.
Those symptoms, however, never materialized. He completed his shifts at work all week without a problem, even the one he briefly interrupted to take the shot on live television as part of an inaugural vaccination event organized by City Hall.
“I’ve been feeling great. I haven’t had any symptoms whatsoever other than some mild soreness around the injection site,” said Hooks, an emergency department nurse at Loretto Hospital. “But that’s to be expected anytime your boss puts a needle in one of your muscles.”
As vaccinations began in earnest around the U.S. last week, four staff members at Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville had reactions after receiving the shot, causing the hospital to temporarily pause vaccinations “out of an abundance of caution.” The hospital plans to resume vaccinations on Sunday.
Three hospital workers in Alaska suffered allergic reactions after receiving shots. Two health care workers in Britain also had anaphylactic reactions and recovered after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Though they remain isolated incidents at this point — more than 138,000 Britons received the shot in the rollout’s first week — the cases are certain to draw attention to the drug’s possible side effects as more people become eligible for vaccination.
The Tribune spoke with three of the five hospital workers who received the first shots administered in Chicago. All reported feeling fine, with only slight pain around the injection for the first 24 hours or so.
There have been no reports of serious side effects from the more than 17,000 people vaccinated in Illinois as of Friday morning, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady also has indicted the drug’s earliest recipients are doing well.
Elizabeth Zimnie, an emergency department nurse at Norwegian American Hospital in Humboldt Park, said she’s “feeling great.”
“I felt some soreness around the injection site, but I let it ride and I’m now 100% back to normal,” she said.
The recipients have been asked to track their well-being through a text messaging system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each day, they receive a message asking about their specific symptoms, ability to work, whether they’ve felt feverish that day and how they’re feeling overall.
The program, which all health care workers in Illinois are being asked to use, requires a daily check-in for the first week and then weekly reports for the next six. Participants also will be surveyed at the three-, six- and 12-month marks, as the CDC monitors the vaccine’s side effects in real time so the agency can quickly investigate any issues that arise.
“First and foremost, vaccine safety is our biggest concern,” Arwady said after the inaugural shots were given Tuesday.
When Dr. Marina Del Rios, the first Illinois resident to receive a vaccination, receives her afternoon reminder to check in, she follows a link to the CDC site. The first question asks how she is feeling and gives her the choice of “good” (green smiley face emoji), “fair” (yellow emoji with mouth in a straight line) and “bad” (red frowny face) before asking more specific questions.
In screenshots Del Rios shared with the Tribune, she picked the smiley face, reported she was able to do normal activities, and said she did not have chills, abdominal pain, a fever, rash or any of the other listed ailments. She also stated she had no pain, redness, swelling or itching in the injection area.
If anything, Del Rios said, the flu shot she received earlier in the fall was more painful than the one aimed at blunting the most deadly virus in a century. However, as someone who has been treating COVID patients at the University of Illinois Hospital for 10 months and risking her own health, she was willing to accept the known side effects if it meant protection from the illness that has killed more than 15,000 people statewide.
“Most people who have side effects from vaccines are very minor: body aches, soreness of the arm, maybe a low grade fever the day after or maybe two days out,” said Del Rios, the hospital’s social emergency medicine director. “But that compared to getting COVID? I’m willing to take that chance. I’m willing to take a chance of a minor inconvenience or discomfort over finding myself on a ventilator.”
The recipients told the Tribune that they have spent days following their historic injections talking about their experiences with others and encouraging them to consider getting vaccinated.
Hooks, the emergency department nurse, wore a sticker on his hospital scrubs proclaiming “I got vaccinated” during his shifts, which has led to questions from both co-workers and patients about why he agreed to the injection. Hooks, who has been socially isolating from his two daughters in recent weeks because of the spike in cases, explains how he discussed it with his personal physician, read the Food and Drug Administration briefings on the drug and talked with doctors at Loretto before making his decision.
He doesn’t hide the fact he at one point had concerns the vaccine, particularly the plan to administer the drug to essential hospital workers in the first round.
“I certainly did not want to be among the first initially,” he said. “I was a little concerned that health care workers were being put in a position where we looked like guinea pigs. But in the intervening time, I did research on my own and spoke to a lot of physicians. I became incredibly confident about it, to the point that I was excited to take it.”
Hooks, who planned to spend part of Friday afternoon responding to a Facebook friend’s distrust of the vaccine, said he hopes the hospital will distribute some kind of T-shirt or button that vaccinated workers could wear during their shifts. He thinks it would spark conversations among patients and staff, which could change people’s views.
One such discussion Tuesday with a skeptical patient failed to sway the man, so Hooks invited him to come back in two or three months for another talk.
“If I’m still here and walking around,” Hooks said he told him, “that’s a good sign that it’s safe.”
Chicago Tribune reporter Madeline Buckley contributed.
