T&T-born doc­tor Ma­teus Fer­nan­des, who lives and works in the US, was among the his­toric first round of health-care work­ers to be im­mu­nised with Pfiz­er’s COVID-19 vac­cine last Thurs­day.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, the 28-year-old In­ter­nal Med­i­cine Res­i­dent who is at­tached to the New York City hos­pi­tal net­work urged peo­ple to set aside their fears and get vac­ci­nat­ed. He sought to clear the air on some con­cerns be­ing raised about the vac­cine.

Q: How does it work?

MF: The vac­cine is ba­si­cal­ly a string of pro­teins that your body recog­nis­es (called mR­NA). This string is like a recipe with in­gre­di­ents. When the cells in your im­mune sys­tems see the vac­cine pro­teins, it “reads” them and cooks up a piece of the out­side of the coro­n­avirus, the spike pro­tein. These spike pro­teins cov­er the out­side of the virus (the spikes to­geth­er look like a crown, hence the name coro­na which means crown). Your body then makes an­ti­bod­ies which re­move the spike pro­teins. It stores these an­ti­bod­ies in case you get ex­posed to the ac­tu­al virus. So if you were to be ex­posed to the coro­n­avirus, you al­ready have an­ti­bod­ies that can recog­nise and de­stroy the out­side of the virus, and help pre­vent you from get­ting an in­fec­tion.

Can get­ting the vac­cine cause coro­n­avirus?

No, it is not pos­si­ble to con­tract the coro­n­avirus from the vac­cine it­self. The vac­cine on­ly gives your body the recipe (mR­NA) to make the out­er coat­ing (spike pro­teins) of the coro­n­avirus. It does not have any of the harm­ful com­ple­ments of the virus, or the virus it­self.

Can I still con­tract COVID-19 af­ter get­ting the vac­cine?

The coro­n­avirus vac­cine is 95 per cent ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing symp­to­matic coro­n­avirus in­fec­tion. But it was not test­ed for pre­vent­ing asymp­to­matic in­fec­tion. This means that we need to con­tin­ue so­cial dis­tanc­ing, wear­ing face masks, and fol­low­ing guide­lines to en­sure we don’t cause asymp­to­matic spread.

What about the side ef­fects?

The ad­verse ef­fects re­port­ed in tri­als were sim­i­lar to those seen with oth­er vac­cines, most com­mon­ly pain, swelling or red­ness at the site of in­jec­tion. This makes sense, be­cause we use a tiny nee­dle (the size used in new­born ba­bies) to give the vac­cine, and then your im­mune sys­tem gets to work. Oth­er side ef­fects that a mi­nor­i­ty of pa­tients ex­pe­ri­ence in­clude fever, tired­ness, headache, mus­cle pains, and sore throat.

If you have an al­ler­gy to any com­po­nents of the vac­cine or al­ler­gic re­ac­tions to any vac­cine in the past, then you can have se­vere al­ler­gic re­ac­tions to the vac­cine. This in­for­ma­tion is checked by health­care providers be­fore any vac­cine is giv­en to make sure it doesn’t hap­pen to you.

I saw on the news that peo­ple got Bell’s Pal­sy or fa­cial weak­ness af­ter get­ting the vac­cine. Can that hap­pen to me?

Bell’s pal­sy is a tran­sient weak­ness of a part of the nerve that sup­plies the mus­cles in the face. Stud­ies show that it oc­curs in about 15-30 per 100,000 peo­ple per year, and is thought to be due to her­pes virus. In the coro­n­avirus tri­al, four peo­ple out of over 22,000 who re­ceived the vac­cine ex­pe­ri­enced fa­cial weak­ness, which is ac­tu­al­ly less than the base­line preva­lence. It is very un­like­ly that there is any causal re­la­tion­ship be­tween the vac­cine and Bell’s pal­sy, so it is not con­sid­ered to be an ad­verse ef­fect of the vac­cine. Nev­er­the­less, the FDA is cur­rent­ly mon­i­tor­ing for Bell’s Pal­sy in vac­cine re­cip­i­ents in case it hap­pens more than ex­pect­ed.

This vac­cine was de­vel­oped so fast, how do we know that it is safe?

The COVID-19 virus may be new, but coro­n­avirus is a fam­i­ly of virus­es with many dif­fer­ent strains. Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gists have spent decades study­ing it in the past. The process of mak­ing the vac­cine was ac­cel­er­at­ed due to a re­mark­able glob­al team ef­fort, with doc­tors and re­searchers com­ing to­geth­er in many coun­tries to work re­lent­less­ly on the tri­als. In fact, it on­ly took re­searchers ten days af­ter the first re­port­ed COVID pneu­mo­nia in Chi­na to analyse the virus genome. The US Gov­ern­ment with Op­er­a­tion Warp Speed, and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions in Eu­rope, as well as the pri­vate sec­tor, in­vest­ed bil­lions to fund and de­vel­op the vac­cine even be­fore they knew it will work be­cause they trust­ed the process, but more im­por­tant­ly be­cause this pan­dem­ic was a glob­al emer­gency. While a less crit­i­cal vac­cine takes years to de­vel­op, the fund­ing, hard work of re­searchers, and cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy al­lowed us to com­plete all the prop­er checks and bal­ances to en­sure that a safe vac­cine can be made. On that note, it’s al­so im­por­tant to know that the vac­cine is still on­go­ing tri­als, but the re­sults were so ef­fec­tive that it was sim­ply un­eth­i­cal to wait any longer. There­fore it was au­tho­rised by the FDA for emer­gency use, still await­ing fi­nal ap­provals for reg­u­lar use up­on com­ple­tion of the tri­als.

Do doc­tors, or does the Gov­ern­ment prof­it from giv­ing us the vac­cine?

The Gov­ern­ment has spent about $7 bil­lion USD to get 250,000 dos­es of the vac­cine when it be­comes avail­able to us, as well as ad­di­tion­al fund­ing for mak­ing new fa­cil­i­ties for stor­ing the vac­cine. We trust the sci­ence and are will­ing to in­vest in this im­por­tant pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure to help keep our vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion safe.

When will we get the vac­cine?

The Gov­ern­ment of T&T stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly that they are work­ing with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (our re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion health body) to get enough vac­cines to cov­er about 20 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion. Front line health­care work­ers and oth­ers at high­est risk will get the vac­cine first. Cur­rent­ly, there is no con­firmed time, but hope­ful­ly, it will ar­rive soon.