A vaccine is a type of medicine, a biologic substance that is inoculated into the body and trains the immune system to fight a disease it has not come into contact with before. Vaccines are designed to prevent disease, rather than treat a disease once you have caught it.
There are trillions of bacteria’s and virus on your body, most can’t get in because of your body’s barrier but occasionally some do. Partially those we come to know. When they get through your immune system is normally quick to tackle the bacteria and when not, your immune system to create additional antibodies from white blood cells to tackle the difficult Bactria, but unfortunately not only can this can take days to do, but your body can only create one key at a time.
Vaccines work the same way; well they did up until Covid-19 came. Typically, a vaccine will have a dead antibodies, toxins or surface proteins that’s placed into your body to kickstart the immune system and start the manufacturing process to protect your body. The manufacturing process creates more of these antibodies to tackle and distroy the virus should you ever get it.
The AstraZeneca vaccine takes this approach while the Pfizer takes a new approach. Using mRNA technology the vaccine introduces a piece of genetic code that tricks the body into creating antibodies to tackle the virus should someone get it.
As a result of vaccines, we all can live safer without being killed or affected by several severe diseases. Several vaccines have been developed for various diseases.
Some of the most common vaccines available are Covid-19, Dengue virus for the Dengue fever, Ebolavirus for Ebola H1N1 virus for Swine flu. Some you might be more familiar with, Hepatitis A, B, E, MMR for the Measles Mumps and Rubella, and many many more including the most well-known Tetanus vaccine.
When the covid vaccines were being created, researchers found that when just one dose of the vaccine was given it gave a relatively week immune response, particularly the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine. Though after tests saw that two doses gave a stronger immune response. Knowing that a vaccine would take around 2 weeks to trigger your immune system to begin that manufacturing process, they know they couldn’t give the second dose too close to the first.
Why? Well basically, the first dose of the vaccine starts the process of manufacturing the antibodies and begins building up protection. The second dose is there to enhance and reinforce this protection, basically, the second dose adds more manpower to the manufacturing process. It might make sense to have all this manpower at the start, but with too many workers and not enough jobs while the manufacturing process builds up, these workers would have nothing to do and end up leaving early out of boredom.
If you would like to know more around the Covid vaccine and have an interest in becoming a Phlebotomist please get in touch. If you are ready to begin your phlebotomy journey please do book on a phlebotomy training course, or call us for more advise.