About one third of COVID-19 vaccine recipients in Australia’s initial rollout are reporting at least one adverse event but these are ‘as expected’, surveillance suggests.

Data from the first three days of administration of the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Comirnaty, collected by AusVaxSafety suggests that soreness at injection site, headache and fatigue are those most commonly reported.

AusVaxSafety, an active surveillance program which is government funded and run by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance in Sydney, has been sending follow-up SMS messages to vaccine recipients with a survey about potential side effects.

About one third of the 5000 patients who responded to the survey said they had experienced an expected adverse event.