A COVID-19 Q&A | Vaccine Clinic

Brookline Public Health Nurse Elizabeth Bennett had some ready answers to queries about the coronavirus during a visit last month to the Senior Center. Elizabeth Bennett, Public Health Nurse with Brookline’s Department of Public Health and Human Services, brought some valuable information to the Senior Center last month in a question-and-answer presentation about COVID-19.

Bennett began her remarks by explaining she would focus on “common myths” about the coronavirus, which, nearly three years after it was first diagnosed, continues to pose a challenge to the worldwide medical community and the populations it serves.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” she said before launching into a series of true-or-false questions about the highly transmissible virus. Bennett dispelled the following myths: 

• You do not need to be vaccinated if you have already had COVID-19.
  • False, according to Bennett. “The vaccine is a safer, more dependable way to get immunity than getting sick with COVID-19 is,” she said.
• The vaccine can make a person take sick with COVID.
  • False again. “It can’t make you sick with the virus,” she said, while acknowledging that the inoculation can cause some symptoms such body aches and fever.
• How does one know if a vaccine is safe?
  • Vaccines have been used to protect against infectious diseases for more than a century, Bennett said, “and we’ve used all that knowledge to develop a coronavirus vaccine.” She noted that the vaccine being used in the fight against the virus was “thoroughly tested before being marketed.”
• Getting the vaccine will cause a person to test positive on a virus test.
  • Another falsehood, according to Bennett. “None of the authorized and recommended vaccines can cause that positive test result,” she said. 

Bennett urged the audience listening in on her Oct. 12 presentation to stay up-to-date with follow-up inoculations. A bivalent vaccine “now widely available,” she said, protects against the original virus and most Omicron variants that have since been identified by public health professionals. As for how long vaccine protection lasts, Bennett said there is “relatively little data on that, so getting a booster is important.”

Get Your Flu and COVID-19 Booster Shot November 1st at Brookline Senior Center

The Senior Center will be hosting a flu and COVID-19 booster vaccine clinic on Tuesday, November 1st between 9:00 AM-1:00 PM. Please register at 617-730-2770, (1) state which vaccine(s) you want, (2) if you would like the flu vaccine, (3) if you would like the high dose or regular, and (4) if you have an email address, please leave it so that you can be sent a signup link for a time slot. Participants must bring ID and insurance cards.