Covid-19 Vaccine

By Anu Paul

January 11th 2021

 When Edward Jenner discovered that having cow pox protected you from deadly small pox, I wonder if he had any idea how his discovery would change the world. 

Today, this concept of fooling your immune system into developing immunity against a dangerous illness by giving it a milder illness has been developed so far that we now know that you only need the shape of the disease-causing organism to make your immune system develop the antibodies necessary to fight it.

I am proud to say that I have gotten the first dose of the COVID vaccine. 

I have now joined the group of 1.6 million people in the UK who have already been given a vaccine against COVID -19. Since I work in a hospital, I belong to the priority group that is being vaccinated early. But truth be told, I am yet to see a single patient with corona virus. Working as I do in the children's hospital in a specialty which doesn't see many lung infections, I am relatively shielded from the madness that is going on in London now.

I feel a bit useless and inadequate since I am not on the frontline but perhaps my turn may yet come. At present, the hospital wants me to be available to continue looking after the patients I usually look after; those with problems with their kidneys and bladders.

Until I am called up, I know that by receiving the vaccine, I am also part of the fight against the pandemic.

I was impressed by how quick and efficient the whole process was; we queued for a few minutes, had to go through a quick screening questionnaire and then the nurse was saying, ' Just a sharp scratch!' and it was all over.

I was interested to see that the decoy virus I had been given was a coronavirus that normally infects chimpanzees. The virus had been grown inside human embryonic kidney cells. How clever are these processes and the people who carry them out!!

On the following day, I had a sore arm and I felt feverish and a bit shivery. Yay! My immune system was already working! 

And the following day, I felt full of energy and hope and gratitude that perhaps we had taken another small step towards beating this virus that has brought the world to its knees.