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It’s not often people are “excited” about getting a vaccine to the point they couldn’t sleep the night before. But for Dr. Jennifer A. Alderink, DO, and other healthcare workers, this isn’t just any vaccine. It’s a “vaccine of hope.”
Alderink, a family medicine physician and co-site director of Beacon Medical Group, La Porte, was one of several hundred healthcare workers to receive the first round of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine at Franciscan Health Michigan City. Administration of the vaccines started on Dec. 18.
“It went great. I was really excited to know it was starting and we’re finally taking a step forward – I couldn’t sleep the night before,” said Alderink.
With the vaccine comes hope of life getting back to normal.
“We definitely have more hope than we did three months ago. Then we really didn’t know a date on vaccinations, and COVID cases were surging,” said Alderink.
She described development of the COVID-19 vaccine as “remarkable,” noting that everyone involved in creating and approving the vaccine managed to shrink a 3-to-4-year process into nine months, with safety and efficacy a priority.
”It’s not something we’ve experienced before,” said Alderink. “Innovation often comes out of necessity, and it was an emergency. Shrinking that time down was out of necessity. A lot of things had to fall into place, a lot of funding had to fall in place, for this to come about quickly.”
But the biggest component of the equation was the technology used to create the vaccine.
“You have to go back to high school biology and look at a model of a cell,” said Alderink.
The vaccine utilizes strands of genetic material called messenger RNA (mRNA). Alderink explained that scientists replicated the genetic code for the unique spike protein on the COVID-19 virus. The code is placed in a lipid fat molecule, which protects the mRNA from enzymes in the body. It also allows the mRNA to enter muscle cells near the vaccination site. Once inside the cytoplasm, the cells recognize it and then produce the spike protein from the message on the mRNA.
After the spike protein is made within the muscle cells, the body very quickly recognizes it as foreign and starts producing antibodies to destroy it. From there, the information travels through the lymphatic system to the lymph nodes, where the body makes immune cells.
Alderink, a family medicine physician and co-site director of Beacon Medical Group, La Porte, was one of several hundred healthcare workers to receive the first round of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine at Franciscan Health Michigan City. Administration of the vaccines started on Dec. 18.
“It went great. I was really excited to know it was starting and we’re finally taking a step forward – I couldn’t sleep the night before,” said Alderink.
With the vaccine comes hope of life getting back to normal.
“We definitely have more hope than we did three months ago. Then we really didn’t know a date on vaccinations, and COVID cases were surging,” said Alderink.
She described development of the COVID-19 vaccine as “remarkable,” noting that everyone involved in creating and approving the vaccine managed to shrink a 3-to-4-year process into nine months, with safety and efficacy a priority.
”It’s not something we’ve experienced before,” said Alderink. “Innovation often comes out of necessity, and it was an emergency. Shrinking that time down was out of necessity. A lot of things had to fall into place, a lot of funding had to fall in place, for this to come about quickly.”
But the biggest component of the equation was the technology used to create the vaccine.
“You have to go back to high school biology and look at a model of a cell,” said Alderink.
The vaccine utilizes strands of genetic material called messenger RNA (mRNA). Alderink explained that scientists replicated the genetic code for the unique spike protein on the COVID-19 virus. The code is placed in a lipid fat molecule, which protects the mRNA from enzymes in the body. It also allows the mRNA to enter muscle cells near the vaccination site. Once inside the cytoplasm, the cells recognize it and then produce the spike protein from the message on the mRNA.
After the spike protein is made within the muscle cells, the body very quickly recognizes it as foreign and starts producing antibodies to destroy it. From there, the information travels through the lymphatic system to the lymph nodes, where the body makes immune cells.