Severe allergic reactions to COVID-19 vaccines are happening at a higher rate than adverse reactions to flu vaccines, federal health officials said on Jan. 6. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that the reactions, known as anaphylaxis, are happening at a rate of 11.1 per million vaccinations. With flu vaccines, anaphylaxis occurs at a rate of 1.3 per 1 million injections. “The anaphylaxis rate for COVID-19 vaccines may seem high compared to flu vaccines, but I want to reassure you, this is still a rare outcome,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a call. Twenty-one people who have received vaccines experienced severe allergic reactions, from among the first 1.89 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which were administered between Dec. 14 and Dec. 23 of last year. Seventeen of the people who experienced severe …