Marshfield Clinic Health System Answers Questions About Coronavirus Vaccine

Wednesday, January 13th, 2021 -- 1:01 PM

With state’s distributing the coronavirus vaccine, many people have questions about them.

Marshfield Clinic Health System has a list of Frequently Asked Questions.  The number one question is if the vaccine is safe?  There are no reported serious safety concerns from either vaccine. All approved vaccines will have gone through extensive clinical trials.

The vaccine’s safety and efficacy will be reviewed by two panels of independent experts at the FDA.  While the vaccine did go through the clinical trial process quickly, it was tested on thousands of people just like every other vaccine or treatment that needs to be approved by the FDA.

The shorter timeframe for vaccine development was achieved by reducing the time between each phase of the clinical trials.  Another question, what are the long term side effects?

The vaccine has been tested on tens of thousands of people in initial clinical trials. No serious safety concerns were reported in these trials. However, more monitoring is needed to better understand if there are any long term side effects beyond the timeframe of the clinical trials.

Ongoing safety monitoring through existing programs will continue to address safety concerns with the vaccine in real-time.  The programs include the Vaccine Safety Datalink, Clinical Safety Assessment project, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting Systems and new monitoring systems such as the V-SAFE program and the National Healthcare Safety Network.

Will the protection last?  At this time, we don’t know how long the protection from the vaccine will last. The initial studies have shown the vaccine to provide protection from COVID-19 infection for the duration of the trials. There will be ongoing monitoring of the vaccination.

Due to false information and conspiracy theories being spread on social media, some of the more fantastic questions include whether the vaccine contains a microchip and if it can alter DNA?

The answer is no to both.  If you’d like to see more of the frequently asked questions, you can visit their website.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.