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