By Dr Michelle Natividad Bautista, MBBS, Honours, FANZCA
Day 1 of our fourth lockdown. Recuperation time is finished and I’m back on the battlefield. I never trained to be a soldier, yet here we are again. It may be exhausting, but it’s good to know that I’m on the winning team.
We’ve beaten this virus before and we’ll do it again. It’s déjà Vu, this time, brought on by the Indian Covid variant from another quarantine leak, which is more infectious and has shorter incubation time.
I have been fully vaccinated since March and I urge everyone to get vaccinated too. Appointments and walk ins are available for everyone over 40. Aged 40-49 will receive Pfizer, those aged over 50, Astra Zeneca.
Vaccination is one of the reasons you can leave your home during lockdown, and be more than 5km away.
Hopefully soon, the under 40s will be eligible too, as they are the ones likely to transmit the virus. As I mentioned before, both vaccines decrease the severity of the illness and the risk of death from the virus, but they also decrease viral load, hence reduce the spread of the virus.
Minor side effects (sore arm, fever, muscle aches and pains) are common, but serious side effects such as blood clots, anaphylaxis and life threatening complications are extremely rare and they can happen with any medications, not just the vaccines.
So for now, let’s stay home, look after ourselves and each other, get tested if symptomatic or has been to the exposure sites, get vaccinated, beat the virus and hopefully prevent future lockdowns.
Victorians, we’ve got this, but this time we have more arsenal on our side.
Dr. Natividad works at multiple hospitals both in public and private in Melbourne. She is an anaesthetist, and since the start of the pandemic has been called to help and manage deteriorating COVID-19 patients, or those with cardio-respiratory arrests requiring resuscitation, intubations and ventilations in the wards, emergency departments, on top of anaesthetising patients undergoing emergency surgery.