Petechiae and Desquamation of Fingers Following Immunization With BTN162b2 Messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 Vaccine

Abstract

Since late 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus2 (SARS-CoV-2), has killed over three million people. More than 600,000 of these deaths have occurred in the United States alone. While advances in the treatment of COVID-19 have been made, the advent of highly effective vaccines against this coronavirus variant has given hope that the end of the pandemic may be near. Unfortunately, resistance towards vaccination remains a barrier to virus eradication both in the United States and globally. The driving factor for much of this opposition is the concern over potential adverse reactions from the vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. In order to combat this, it is imperative that vaccine side effects and their corresponding clinical course are clearly described. This report details the case of a female patient who developed acral petechiae, desquamation of the fingers, and a facial rash that occurred shortly after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.