A survey of pilots receiving one type of COVID-19 vaccine found that side effects lasted longer after the second dose of the vaccine than the first, according to Israeli physicians who conducted the survey and concluded that pilots should be grounded for longer periods after receiving the second dose than the first.
Their findings, detailed in a report in the September issue of Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, supported the Israeli Air Force (IAF) Aeromedical Center’s policy of grounding pilots for 24 hours after the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and for 48 hours after the second dose.
They survey netted responses from 127 flight crewmembers who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine between December 2020 and February 2021.
Overall, 86 percent of survey respondents said they had side effects after the first dose, and 95 percent, after the second dose, the report said.
“The most common side effect was injection site…
