Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, the first doses of the vaccine, which are slated to be administered to health care workers and nursing home residents and staff, are expected to arrive in Connecticut in a matter of days.
In a recent interview, Dr. Richard A. Martinello, medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health, answered some basic questions about the vaccine.
Why are two doses of the vaccine needed?
Both the vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna necessitate two shots for optimal immunity against the virus. This is the case for other vaccines, such as Hepatitis B and Pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough, and even the flu vaccine, when first being administered to young children.
With the COVID-19 vaccine, multiple shots “help increase the degree of immunity and also help to ensure that the population of people who’ve been immunized have been immunized effectively,” Martinello said.
The Pfizer vaccine requires two doses be administered three weeks apart, whereas the Moderna vaccine necessitates the two doses be administered four weeks apart.
Documents published by the FDA show that the Pfizer vaccine is about 52% effective after the first shot and increases to about 95% effectiveness after the second shot.
How long one’s immunity will last after getting vaccinated is still a question, Martinello said.
“There will be a good deal of research to see how long the immunity lasts,” he said. “ We may see that people need to get annual vaccinations against COVID or we might see the immunity last long enough or enough people get it that we don’t need to do that.”
With the chicken pox and measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccines, for example, it was later discovered that extra doses were needed because people’s immunity wasn’t lasting as long as initially hoped, Martinello said.
What are the potential side effects?
Like other vaccines, there will be a proportion of people who have some degree of side effects, mostly mild, Martinello said, which will likely resolve in a short period of time.
The side effects “look very similar to what see from other vaccines,” he said, such as fatigue, achiness and, in some cases, a slight fever.
Some volunteers who participated in Pfizer's vaccine trial started to feel side effects within hours after receiving the second dose. That’s not surprising, Martinello said.
“One would expect a more quick and robust immune response to when that protein (that the vaccine helps to develop) is present back in the immune system a second time,” he said. “That's exactly what we want.”
While it would be great if no one felt any side effects, they are a sign that the vaccine is directing the body to respond, Martinello said.
Some people might choose to take Tylenol or ibuprofen before getting vaccinated to try to prevent side effects from occurring, he said. Others might want to plan to take a day off of work after getting a shot. For Yale New Haven facilities, the plan is not to vaccinate all of the employees in the intensive care unit or emergency departments at Lawrence +Memorial Hospital, for example, on the same day, Martinello said.
How does the COVID-19 vaccine differ from the flu vaccine?
The most common way that flu vaccines are made is using an egg-based manufacturing process. At the start of each year, a large group of scientists get together to determine what they believe will be the most common strains of flu in the Northern Hemisphere. The selected strains are then injected into chicken eggs to incubate and replicate for several days.
Scientists then harvest fluid containing the virus from the eggs and inactivate the virus, so they are left with the virus antigen, which is what triggers one's immune system to respond.
The COVID-19 vaccine uses a completely different approach.
A “lipid actually helps the mRNA stay around long enough so the enzymes within the cells of your muscle turn the mRNA into a protein and the protein is the spike protein that you’ve been hearing about with COVID,” Martinello said. “The spike protein is then recognized by the immune system as foreign and it works to get rid of it.”
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Answers to some basic questions about COVID-19 vaccine - theday.com
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