Student Spotlight

The Road to A New Normal: COVID-19 Vaccines

COVID-19 Vaccination Experience

By: Isabel Taveras

This pandemic has surely created a lot of uncertainty when it comes to vaccines and their effectiveness. To rid you all of some doubts you may have, here are some frequently asked questions answered by a NYC health provider. Disclaimer, the health provider is not a COVID-19 professional. Besides facts, her responses also include opinions.

When will everyone get vaccinated? “ I think it will take a while, hopefully by the summer I would say. As we’ve heard on the news, now we have an issue because we don’t have enough vaccines. So, that’s prolonging the process and it’s difficult for people to get the appointments if we don’t have enough vaccines. But if they increase the production of the vaccines, hopefully we can get everyone vaccinated much quicker.” For more information, visit

https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/frequently-asked-questions-0.

Does the vaccine make me get COVID? “No. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines do not contain SARS-CoV-2 and cannot give you COVID-19.”

Has the vaccine displayed any unintended side effects to those who took it? “These vaccines are new, so the tests and observations are based on the last few months. We do not know what’s going to happen in a year, or in five years or ten years because the vaccine has not been around for that long. So, what we have seen is that with the Moderna [vaccine], some people have gotten some allergic reactions. They had to stop administering it for a while but there is still research to be done for all vaccines.”

Are common allergies an issue in order to get the vaccine? “Common allergies are not a contraindication for the COVID-19 vaccine. But if you had an anaphylactic reaction, which is a severe allergic reaction to a previous vaccine, then you are at a higher risk for having an anaphylactic reaction to the Covid vaccine. So [nurses] need to observe you for a longer time.”

Are there benefits that the Pfizer vaccine has that Moderna doesn’t have or vice versa? “They both use messenger RNA, but they have different components. They are both about 95% effective, so there is not much difference between one or the other.” For more

information, visit https://covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/frequently-asked-questions-0.

Vaccination Experiences

Here is a little bit of backstory about the NYC health provider’s vaccination experiences. DISCLAIMER: everyone is different and everyone is subject to having different reactions to the vaccine. If you feel any concerning side effects, consider contacting your doctor immediately. For more information, visit https://

covid19vaccine.health.ny.gov/what-youneed-know.

First Dose Experience

“I got my first dose on 12/23/2020. In December, many people were refusing [the vaccine] so there were a lot of open appointment slots. For my first dose, I didn’t have any symptoms. I didn’t have a fever, I didn’t have any pain in my arm. No symptoms whatsoever. Compared to the flu shot, the first dose was more or less the same.”

Second Dose Experience

“My second dose was scheduled for January 12th. At that time the waiting time was longer, there were a lot more people getting the vaccine. From what I could see, it was much more difficult to get an appointment. For the second dose, I had pain in my arm that extended to my back and neck. But I believe it was because the vaccine was injected a little too high in the muscle. The pain started about two or three hours after the injection. But the next day I decided to take pain medication and in an hour I started to feel much better. I also had some swelling that took a few days to subside. I didn’t have body aches or fever.”