Swiss claim Covid vaccine success despite side-effects

Some 70% of the Swiss population is vaccinated against Covid-19. Keystone / Salvatore Di Nolfi

Covid-19 vaccines achieved the goals of protecting vulnerable people and easing pressures on healthcare, says the head of Switzerland’s Federal Vaccination Commission.

But Christoph Berger also acknowledged that further research is needed to determine the severity and causes of various vaccine side-effects to people’s health.

Around 70% of the Swiss population have had at least one dose of a vaccine against Covid-19. A minority of people have reported adverse symptoms, from headaches and fatigue to inflammation of heart muscles.

“It is clear that there are undesirable vaccination symptoms, including severe ones. We must take these people and their suffering seriously and help them too,” Berger told the Tamedia media group on Monday.

“There is as yet no clear diagnosis of this post-vac syndrome. The term is a collective pot for various symptoms that could at least have a temporal connection with the vaccination. Maybe the connection is causal or not.”

Berger said more research is needed to get to the bottom of side-effects but gave the vaccination campaign an over-all positive assessment.

“It is clear that vaccination benefits far outweigh the risks.  We never assumed that we would make the virus go away. Our goal has always been to prevent as many serious cases as possible through vaccination so that the healthcare system is not overburdened,” he said.

The government has urged people to get booster shots this winter, especially the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.

Switzerland currently has administered nearly 17 million vaccine doses and still has a stockpile of around 13.5 million doses, with millions more on order.

According not the latest figures, a total of 1,260 new lab-confirmed Covid cases were reported in Switzerland January 17 over the previous seven-days.