Other accompanying symptoms | Baby fever after vaccination

Other accompanying symptoms

In addition to fever, there are often local reactions at the injection site. These can occur in the form of redness, swelling and pain. Symptoms such as aching limbs, loss of appetite and general malaise can also accompany the fever.

After live vaccinations, slight skin rashes may also occur between the 7th and 14th day after vaccination. More serious side effects of vaccinations are anaphylactic reactions, i.e. allergies to components of the vaccine. In this case the reaction usually occurs within a few minutes and almost always within 30-60 minutes. An allergy can become noticeable by strong local reactions or in the worst case by a circulatory collapse (anaphylactic shock). In this case further vaccinations with the same vaccine should be avoided and a doctor should be consulted.

Is the fever contagious after a vaccination?

Fever in response to vaccination is not contagious. Skin rashes that indicate a vaccination disease, i.e. an attenuated form of the actual disease, are also not contagious, as the pathogens were administered in an attenuated form. Nevertheless, pregnant women are advised to avoid children with a vaccine chickenpox rash in the package insert for the varicella (chickenpox) vaccination. This is, however, above all a precautionary measure to reliably rule out transmission.

After which vaccinations does fever occur particularly frequently?

After a vaccination the baby’s body gets to know the pathogen and the immune system remembers the typical structures. This process can lead to a somewhat excessive reaction of the immune system, which is why some children develop fever after vaccinations. With some vaccinations, which were carried out earlier, such vaccination reactions were relatively frequent.Today’s vaccines are all very strictly controlled.

With all vaccines, the probability of a fever reaction is very low, which is why the risk of certain vaccines can hardly be named. With dead vaccines, where only certain proportions of the pathogens are administered, a possible high fever of the baby occurs within the first three days. With live vaccines, the pathogen must first multiply in the body before a reaction with a possible fever occurs.

This takes five to twelve days. Smallpox vaccination and tuberculosis vaccination are no longer included in the recommendations. These have led to vaccination reactions with fever much more often.

The likelihood of fever depends less on a particular agent than on the person. Some babies tend to have more frequent fever reactions. Immunocompromised babies should not be given live vaccines as this increases the likelihood of fever and other complications.