Vaccines
By Dunya, Year 6
A vaccine is a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually given through needle injections, but can also be given by mouth or sprayed into the nose. The covid vaccine has 2 doses, after 2 doses you will officially be fully vaccinated.
Even if you have the covid vaccine you still have a possibility of catching it so to stay safe from the virus we are still encouraged to wear masks, keep using hand sanitizers and continue social distancing.
All vaccines have an age group that is eligible to get the jab. In Australia the vaccines that we are using (Pfizer and Astra Zeneca) are used to vaccinate from 16 to 60 years old.
The AstraZeneca vaccine had some side effects including pain where you got jabbed, headache, tiredness, muscle pain, fever and blood clots which resulted in 6 deaths in Australia. These side effects became more intense leading to people not wanting.
Australia is hanging behind on the vaccine rollout with only 11% of the population vaccinated. Compared to the US we are definitely lagging behind, the US has 50% of their population vaccinated and the UK has over 50%! Even though the vaccine supply is running low we still are nowhere near 50%.
The Prime Minister of NSW had a plan to have all Aussie adults vaccinated by October but now we can see that’s not going to happen. Also the Prime Minister’s first plan was to have everyone vaccinated but the plan relied entirely on AstraZeneca and after the side effects occurred they had to change what vaccine they would use.
Some countries have already started to vaccinate 12 years and up but Australia is still only vaccinating 16 and up. Australia has the Pfizer vaccine in labs now testing to see if 12 year olds can take the jab. It has been approved by labs but is still under further testing.
“If everyone gets vaccinated Australia will be able to live differently.” Scott Morrison quotes. So when everyone is vaccinated we will be able to lift some restrictions and go back to the way we were before.
But the only problem with vaccinating all of Australia is that some people are scared to take the jab, because a vaccine usually takes up to 5 years to perfect. And scientists claim that they have made a working, life saving vaccine which only took 8 months!
