BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) – Some people are feeling slight side effects after getting their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, but doctors still say the shot is the best medicine against the virus.
More than 720,000 people in Louisiana have completed the two-dose series of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Doctors say extreme side effects are very rare. The most common one is soreness in the muscles where you got your shot.
“It’s an unusual soreness that comes on very fast. It’s very intense and then it goes away unusually quickly. Usually, within 24 hours it’s just gone,” said Dr. Jacob Wood, a Family Medicine Physician with Baton Rouge General.
Dr. Wood said other common mild side effects include fatigue, fever and flu-like aches.
“We’re seeing occasionally some people will have some lymph node enlargement over on the side where they get the injection and that’s usually fairly short-lived,” said Dr. Wood, “I’ve encouraged people to take Tylenol if they are prone to having those type of symptoms after immunizations.”
Dr. Wood said even with those slight side effects, he recommends getting the shot.
“Your risk from getting the vaccination is not zero, but it is incredibly lower than your risk of contracting the virus and ending up with a bad outcome from that,” said Dr. Wood.
You can find the full list of vaccine locations here.