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Fact vs. fiction: What you need to know about COVID-19 vaccine

By Wendy Corona, WSB-TV
By Wendy Corona, WSB-TV

ATLANTA — Vaccine research is something that members of the medical community have been working on for years.  The discoveries that we enjoy today are the culmination of years of work by hardworking scientists.

“There’s ongoing research on these vaccines. It isn’t as if it just stopped as soon as we started delivering them,” Dr. Amy Patterson, associate professor of public health at Agnes Scott, said.

Although there has been lots of research on vaccines, such as the one for COVID-19, there are still many questions out there.  Researchers face challenges like the emergence of new strains of the virus.

The current Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are able to still provide a good amount of protection for the recipient.

“They are able to provide a good amount of protection with the known strands that are out there now,” said neuroscientist Dr. Stacey Dutton.

But why is the COVID-19 vaccine not on the vaccine schedule for children?

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“Even though there’s a battery of vaccinations that children do receive, those were well tested before they ever made it to our population of children,” Agnes Scott Public Health Department Assistant Professor Dr. Erin Bradley said.

Can we trust a vaccine that seemingly rolled out so quickly?  The global public health emergency caused rules to shift.

“This technology was already studied, so it really was a matter of just accelerating the process,  which does not require you to skip steps,” Bradley said.

Do some people who have already contracted COVID-19 have immunity and for how long?

“Something like the common cold, which is a coronavirus you can get repeatedly. So we’ll have to watch where the science goes with this emerging knowledge,” Bradley said.

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