Ask the Doctor: Everything You Need to Know About Vaccination

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation and Ukraine TV channel continue a series of popular broadcasts with participation of well-known representatives of the Ukrainian healthcare. This time, the guest of the program was Alla Myronenko, a Doctor of Medical Sciences, the Head of the Department of Respiratory and Other Viral Infections at L.V. Gromashevsky Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases.

First of all, the expert told the audience whether vaccines pose a threat to human body. She noted that one should not be afraid of the consequences of vaccination:

‘Allergic reactions can be the fastest result. For any vaccine, a quick reaction of this type means that the patient must be under the doctor’s supervision. For those prone to allergies, vaccinations are not prescribed at all.’

As for the vaccination of those who have had the coronavirus, the doctor emphasized:

‘According to the WHO, the first six months after infection, vaccination is definitely not needed, but the question has not been studied further until now. However, if the vaccine is of a high quality, it will not do any harm to human health.’

The expert noted that an individual can have an innate immunity from the disease, but one should not rely on it.

‘Indeed, there is an innate immunity, and there is a lot of writing about this topic now. Unfortunately, we do not have the necessary laboratory techniques now to say for sure whether a person has innate immunity or not. However, some studies showed that more than half of Ukrainians have “come across” this virus. That is, whole families were ill, but it went unnoticed. That means there are some risk groups out of half of those who have not contracted the disease, and we do have someone to vaccinate,’ Alla Myronenko underscored.

She noted that children would not be vaccinated.

‘Until the age of 18, no vaccinations against the coronavirus are made. At this age, the disease may even pass unnoticed. Therefore, children are not yet massively vaccinated because they have it like an ordinary acute respiratory infection,’ the expert highlighted.

Alla Myronenko also refuted the viewpoint of the so-called “vaccination atheists”:

‘We see that millions of people have been vaccinated worldwide and no one has been killed. These are some fears that are far cry from the civilized world. It is another matter that only after some time it will become clear which vaccine works against the coronavirus, and which one will be short-lived. What we see in the western regions prompts me to suspect that the British strain of the virus might have come, but the vaccines created to date protect against it as well.’

The project Ask the Doctor is being implemented within the framework of the program Rinat Akhmetov – Saving Lives. It meets citizens' need for objective and important information about COVID-19. Thanks to the program Rinat Akhmetov – Saving Lives, public hospitals in Ukraine received 200 ultra-modern ambulances, more than 200 high-class lung ventilators, 337,000 rapid COVID-19 tests and more than 200,000 units of personal protective equipment for doctors.