VACCINES ARE SAFE AND IMPORTANT, SAYS DR. CUTHBERT SEBASTIAN JR.

Basseterre, St. Kitts, May 05, 2021 (SKNIS): Dr. Cuthbert Sebastian Jr., Emergency Room Physician at the Joseph Nathaniel France (JNF) General Hospital, said that vaccines are safe and important and are used to build the natural immunity of a person’s body against disease infection.  

Dr. Sebastian Jr. was at the time discussing the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of vaccination during the May 05 edition of ‘Working for You’.

“A vaccine is a method that we use to boost our natural defenses against a specific disease. What they do is take either a virus, bacteria or pathogen and take either a part of it or the whole thing and they administer it into the body so your body sees it and then it can build up a natural defense against it,” said Dr Sebastian Jr. “But what they do is they weaken it or kill it or it’s a harmless part of it where it doesn’t cause an infection. So that is what a vaccine does. It is seen as a preventative measure to get the actual disease.”

Dr. Sebastian Jr. addressed the issue of catching a disease even after being vaccinated. He noted that vaccines can help reduce the severity of a disease which means that even if a vaccinated person catches an infectious illness, he or she is less likely to suffer serious complications.

“No vaccine is proven to be 100 percent effective—none in existence—not even these COVID-19 vaccines or not the ones that we have seen throughout the past,” he said. “Using some examples from the past, we no longer have to deal with Polio anymore where that used to be rampaging through the world where we had hospitals dedicated just for this disease at one point in time,” Dr Sebastian Jr. added.

Dr. Sebastian Jr. reiterated that vaccines are indeed important and safe, adding that they work with the immune system to prepare one’s body to fight any virus once exposed.

“So, the vaccines do work, they just work over a time period. It needs enough people to take it for it to actually be effective so we can actually see a change in the world.”  
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