Health Check Ep 52: Addressing Covid-19 vaccine safety and the science behind it

20:14 mins

Synopsis: This is a fortnightly podcast series on Wednesdays by The Straits Times and this episode is on the safety of Covid-19 vaccines.

Much has been said about the safety and effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine frontrunners but there are still many people who are hesitant about taking the vaccine, mostly because they are unsure if it is truly safe.

In this episode, ST senior health correspondent Joyce Teo hosts Prof Ooi Eng Eong from the Duke-NUS Medical School. He's the school’s principal investigator in the partnership with Arcturus Therapeutics to develop a self-replicating mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.

Prof Ooi talks about the science of the vaccine, addresses concerns about side effects (including reports of long-term effects from pandemic flu jabs), as well as discuss the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines, and how different the one being trialled here is.