Gulf Today

COVID-19 vaccine prepares shield against attack

- Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

ABU DHABI: The UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention said vaccines prepares the body to fight infection caused by the virus or different bacteria.

The health official during a media briefing on coronaviru­is made the statement.

The health authoritie­s said the body’s immune system recognises the foreign organism and produces antibodies to fight it.

The vaccine prepares the body to fight infection caused by the virus or different bacteria, and the vaccines contain inactive or weak parts of the organism that causes the disease, or the genetic code that creates the same response and stimulate the immune system.

The Sinopharm vaccine works using dead viral particles to expose the body’s immune system to the virus without risking a reaction. The vaccine stimulates the human immune system and forms antibodies to resist the COVID-19 virus.

Authoritie­s said that Pfizer-bionic vaccine works with RNA technology.

This means that part of the gene code is injected into the body, prompting it to start producing s-protein on the shell of the virus that triggers immune response.

Both Astrazenec­a and Sputnik V vaccine are based on a viral vector, it is placed on another virus called adenovirus, which is modified and molecules of the emerging #Covid19 virus are added to it. The virus is considered weak but sufficient to produce antibodies.

The UAE Health sector said, “Many people focus on difference­s in vaccines and how they are manufactur­ed and preserved, but despite these difference­s, vaccines are similar in stimulatin­g the body by producing antibodies, giving the necessary immunity in the event of exposure to the virus.”

Sinopharm’s clinical trials have shown that its vaccine can reduce the chances of contractin­g COVID-19 and prevent complicati­ons from the disease, but no one can yet determine how long protection will last.

Meaning that these cells can remember the pathogen, if the infection is encountere­d again, and stimulate the immune system to reproduce antibodies that are resistant to the virus.

This applies to all vaccines developed to treat COVID-19. The level of antibodies can decrease over months, but the immune system also contains special cells called “memory cells” that may retain COVID-19 informatio­n for long periods of time that may reach years.

Researcher­s found that these cells underwent cycles of mutations even ater recovery and were able to produce effective antibodies more than those initially caused by the infection. Tests have also indicated that these antibodies are able to identify mutated strains.

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