Last week was very important not only for me, but for a lot of people in the medical field. We have been waiting for the covid19 vaccine for almost 1 year, since the start of the pandemic. Finally, it became available and I got vaccinated without any problem.
However, I am not going to tell you whether to take the vaccine or not, or which vaccine to take, but I am going to explain the difference between all of them, then it will be your choice to decide with your doctor, which vaccine to take, depending on the availability in your area.
I will encourage at least at the beginning, that people who are working in the front line especially in the medical field to take it, I will also recommend it to the elderly people and patients with chronic medical diseases like Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, obesity, or heart and lung problem to take it as well.
I want to remind you, that covid19 is not only a mild influenza. So far after 1 year, it affected over 90 million people worldwide, and the death toll is almost 2 million. the good news, we have few vaccines available at this point. Although there are no long-term studies available now, but the short-term studies seem encouraging from the point of efficacy and safety. Of course, you have been hearing a lot of negative publicity from the social media about the vaccines, but it’s better to rely on your information on trusted sources like the FDA, CDC and your local health departments.
Before I discuss the different vaccines, let me talk about our enemy. the covid19 virus consist of genetic material in the middle of the virus called RNA, surrounded by a cover which has several spikes like a crown.
The spikes are made up of protein to protect the virus. These spikes are important when I will talk about some vaccines.
We are fortunate here in Dubai, as we have the option to choose between 2 vaccines. The first vaccine I will discuss is a traditional one, called Sinopharm from china, it is made from an inactive virus like the traditional Flu vaccine, inactive means, it will not give you the illness, but it can give you immunity.
The vaccine has been approved by china and few other countries. So far, the manufacturer did not publish their studies. But they have reported that it is effective in 80 to 86% of the cases. It is given in 2 shots, 3 weeks apart.
A recent study came out of Brazil using
Another different Chinese vaccine called Sinovac was only effective in 50% of the cases
The second one is the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine which is produced by an American-German collaboration. It received emergency use authorization from the FDA, UK and Europe. It’s a new concept of vaccines which involves using a genetic code called mRNA. So, let me discuss it in detail.
Scientists have recently discovered the genetic code of covid19 virus esp the code for the protein spikes covering the virus. The genetic code is able to provide instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of the protein spikes.
They were able to put the RNA genetic code on a messenger to use it as a vaccine, this is why is called messenger RNA or mRNA. This technique does not contain any live or dead part of the virus. Once the vaccine enters our body. The mRNA enters our cells esp the immune cells and instruct these cells to reproduce the protein spikes of the virus.
Remember, these protein spikes do not represent any live or dead virus but only the outside part of the virus. Also, the mRNA does not enter inside the nucleus of our cells which has all our genes and DNA. So, it will not interfere with our genes.
Let’s go back now to the newly developed protein spikes in our cells. In fact, they are considered as a foreign body to our immune
system. This will cause the immune system to attack the protein spikes causing production of antibodies against them.
By the way the mRNA stays in our cells for only few days, this is why, we don’t develop full immunity after the first vaccine and we still require another booster vaccine after 3 weeks to get more antibodies production.
In the future, if we catch covid19, our immune system will recognize and remember the protein spikes on the surface of the virus and use the antibodies produced by the vaccine to destroy the virus and prevent the infection.
The other vaccine which also uses the mRNA Technology is from Moderna. It is also made in the US. The only difference in Moderna vaccine is that the second dose should be given after 4 weeks.
You should be aware that all the vaccines will not give enough immunity after the first shot, so please be careful and protect yourself until you receive the second shot. Normally it will take 1-2 weeks after the second shot to be immune.
In fact, both vaccines Pfizer and Moderna are 95% effective, that means only 5% of the people who took the vaccine may catch a mild form of covid19 infection.
Video shot and edited by: Fadi Helbaoui
