Thousands of employees in nursing homes will be vaccinated against the corona virus in our country from Friday 8 January. How exactly does the vaccine work in our body? Diederik Gommers, national IC chairman and OMT member, explains it in understandable language.
“The new Covid-19 vaccines, also called mRNA vaccines, contain a genetic code of a small part of the virus (and therefore not of the entire virus). If you inject that genetic code, our body makes a part itself. of the virus, the spike proteins. It is impossible to create a new virus from this, but the body will make antibodies against these ‘foreign’ proteins. So you have defenses against the Covid-19 virus if it enters your body.” Gommers writes on his Instagram account.
Dangerous?
Can it mRNA vaccine (Pfizer and Moderna) affect your own DNA? Gommers continues: “This question makes sense and it also sounds quite scary. The mRNA is quickly broken down by our body after it has been injected, so an extra substance has been added to the vaccine to inhibit that process. But isn’t this the case? dangerous? The cells of our body are constantly exposed to viruses that enter, like a common cold, and these also consist of RNA.To convert RNA into DNA you need an enzyme, reverse transcriptase, and that is present in some viruses such as hepatitis B or HIV. This enzyme is not in the vaccine and is also not present in your cells, so the RNA cannot be converted just like that.”
Gommers concludes his story on a positive note: “Hopefully this is clear and you are reassured. Together we will get there!”
podcast
Marjolein van Egmond, professor of immunology at AmsterdamUMC, also explained very clearly in our podcast how corona vaccines work. In the podcast below you will get answers to all questions about safety, target groups, possible side effects, planning and the effect.
