Play your part and protect all of us
OVER HALF OF UK ADULTS HAVE HAD THE JAB THANKS TO THE DEDICATION OF NHS WORKERS – NOW PEOPLE OVER 50 AND THOSE WHO ARE CLINICALLY VULNERABLE CAN MAKE THEIR APPOINTMENTS
Millions of people in the UK have now received their first dose of the Covid vaccine. The impressive speed of the rollout means the NHS is on target to vaccinate all priority groups, including people classed as clinically vulnerable and those over 50, by mid-april. Anyone aged 50 or over and carers who haven’t had an appointment yet can call 119 or visit nhs.uk/covidvaccine to book. We asked a team of experts to answer some common questions about the life-saving jab.
Q ADr Farzana Hussain, a GP, clinical director of Newham Central 1 Primary Care Network and co-chair of the National PCN Network at the NHS Confederation, urges her patients to get the vaccine Which long-term health conditions is the vaccine safe for? For people with long-term health conditions, it’s even more important that they protect themselves with the vaccine. It has been tested on a whole variety of participants, including those with long-term health conditions. We don’t know of any health conditions that the vaccine wouldn’t be safe for. Q If you’re young and fit and wouldn’t get a flu jab, why should you have the Covid vaccine? A Covid is not like flu. If you’re younger you are less likely to die, but various factors including ethnicity can put you more at risk. Also, we want to protect all of us. Otherwise we’re not going to get that immunity we want for our society. You’re putting other people at risk – think about your grandparents, the elderly. The sooner we get that immunity, the sooner we’ll get back to doing the things we love and seeing the people we love.
Q AWill people need a Covid injection every year as future variants come along? We don’t yet know the answer to this. It might be like the flu injection, where every year people catch a new variant, so we’ll have to produce a vaccine that will definitely target that particular strain. Q
Has the vaccine been tested on black or minority ethnic communities? Do we know it’s safe for everyone? A
Each of the vaccines is tested on tens of thousands of people across the world – men and women, people from different ethnic backgrounds, representative of all ages between 18-84. All religious groups endorse the vaccine. And the MHRA has confirmed that it contains no animal products.
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Can the Pfizer and Astrazeneca vaccines be mixed and matched for the second dose?
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We’re not doing this at the moment because the trials were done using the same vaccine for both doses. People who’ve had their first dose will have the same vaccine for their second dose. We are midway through a trial to see if the vaccines could be ‘mixed and matched’ in the future.
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Public Health England is monitoring how effective the vaccine is at protecting against a range of outcomes. So we are waiting until we have sufficient data to provide a clear picture of how long the protective effect of vaccination lasts.
How long does the jab immunise you for?
Q AIf anybody has concerns about the vaccine, where can they get more information? From a GP, practice nurse, community pharmacist or high-street chemist. They are also vaccinated. There’s also nhs.uk/covidvaccine. It’s good for people to come forward.