The COVID-19 vaccine has arrived!

By Maria Burke, RN, Owner, Celtic Angels Home Health Care

As most of you know, several vaccines, including the most widely distributed to date,  manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, have been administered to those people that qualify in Phase I. As I write this article, according to the Boston Globe, more than 600,000 doses have been administered. With a total adult population of people over the age of 18, estimated to be around 5 million here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we still have a long way to go.

With major facilities opened up, such as Fenway Park, Gillette Stadium, college campuses and more, I am pleased to see that the senior population is beginning to be vaccinated as part of the state’s Phase II roll-out. It’s hard to say when the state and the nation, for that matter, will realize the end of the COVID-19 virus pandemic, but some are predicting by the end of this year we will see a significant drop in reported cases.

Many of my senior patients are asking if the vaccine can make them sick with the virus. The answer is no. None of the COVID-19 vaccines contain the live virus that causes COVID-19, so a vaccine cannot make you sick with COVID-19.

Here are some websites you can visit for more information on the vaccine: https://www.mass.gov/covid-19-vaccine or https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/index.html