The experts at Neuberg’s Panel discussion on “Coronavirus – variants and vaccination” said without any hesitancy, frontline healthcare workers and senior citizens with co-morbidities must come forward to take vaccination.
Dr V. Ravi, Former professor of Neurovirology at NIMHAN and Nodal Officer for genomic confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 Government of Karnataka, said, “The available data has shown there are not many severe instances, so senior citizens and people above 45 with or without co-morbidities must take the vaccination. Because with co-morbidities, senior citizens require it more than the person of 30 to 35 age.”
He further said, “Misinformation related vaccines has put frontline health workers on guard for no reason. The hesitancy is the combination of the factors. The first and foremost being the fact that we feel that we are over the hill, then why should we take the vaccine. There is this perception that these are fast tracked vaccines, so safety is an issue.
People must remember that although these are fast-tracked vaccines but have undergone minimum three phases of trials before they were rolled out for use. There has been pre-clinical phase where animals have been given the vaccine, they were challenged with live virus, and there was protection shown. These things are not communicated properly to people and so there is lot of misperception.”
Dr V Ramasubramanian, Infectious Diseases Specialist, Apollo Hospital, said,“People must realize that vaccination saves life. There are differences in efficacy but even then, I would say, if there is 10-20% boost in my health then I would go for it. It is not going to harm anyone.
My appeal to senior citizen is just go get your jab. People with co-morbidities are at the higher risk, but we also know vaccination decreases the chances of hospitalization and death. Is vaccine safe – the answer is ‘it is safe’. My father is 90-year-old, he has taken the vaccine and we know it is safe.”
Dr Saranya Narayan, Chief Microbiologist, Neuberg Diagnostics, said, “Vaccination will help us in combating second wave. At our lab, the frontline workers were apprehensive however when we educated them about its safety, they did come forward for jab. And we have seen zero side effects so far.”
