“The process while sped up, all the critical steps actually more than critical all the regular steps, were followed,” said Omer.
He adds emergency use doesn’t mean emergency development. In fact, the technology in both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines has been around for ten years. It’s called m-RNA.
“m-RNA is simply a piece of strand of genetic material, versus a whole virus that’s weakened,” said Kagya Amoako, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of New Haven.
Amoako says there is no COVID-19 virus in the vaccine. It’s just a piece of the cell that activates your immune system to make antibodies.
Rivers said that, despite constant messaging to the community, the average daily case rate per 100,000 population reached 78.1 in the last two weeks. He expects that number to continue to climb based on preliminary data. This is not going to end because some people have been vaccinated. It is going to take many, many months for people to get vaccinated and not everyone may get vaccinated, said Rivers. This is far from over. The worst, I think, is yet to come unfortunately. How long will we have to wear masks? Is life going to look different during each stage of the vaccination process? Kagya Amoako, Ph.D, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of New Haven, sat down with NBC Connecticut s Len Besthoff to discuss what impact the COVID-19 vaccine will have on our lives.
That includes communities of color who have been greatly impacted by the virus.
“There are lots of myths out there about vaccines,” said Dr. Syed Hussain, Trinity Health of New England Chief Clinical Officer.
Hussain said there’s a lot of misinformation especially when it comes to safety.
“We’ve seen how devastating COVID-19 has been in our country. So when you look at the risk-benefit ratio and educate the public the facts speak for themselves,” said Hussain.
The goal is to break down the vaccine process from how it will be distributed to possible side effects.
On Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed reports that two British health care workers suffered an allergic reaction after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.