Vaccine is safe for children, pediatrician says

Parents are concerned over whether their children should get the coronavirus vaccine.

One claim holding them back is that it could affect fertility.

It’s a concern pediatricians across the county are hearing over and over. Will the vaccine impact children’s fertility.

The answer is no.

Lee Health Pediatrician Dr. Piedade Silva said the belief that the vaccine impacts anyone’s DNA or fertility is just a myth.

Think of the vaccine like an app, she said.

Once you download an app, it doesn’t change your other apps or your device.

It only does one thing and in this case, that creates a memory to fight a virus.

Here is Dr. Silva’s full statement.

“It does not. The vaccine is a messenger RNA. So it’s a tiny little piece that inserts into the cells. It does not get into the nucleus of the cell where the DNA is. There is no way that this affects you genetically. It is like you have a big computer and you just put an app in there, this app that you put in there is not going to affect the rest of the apps, or the software on the computer. It’s just does its independent thing, which is to create a memory to fight the virus.

Even though this vaccine is new, the mRNA vaccines have been under study for decades. That’s why they were able to come up with vaccine so fast. The knowledge was there. There is a lot that’s known about the messenger RNA vaccine, and it does not affect your genes. It does not affect your DNA, it is not going to cause birth defects in your children or affect your fertility, none of that. So that’s just a myth that, unfortunately, gets on Facebook, Twitter, and everything else. There’s no scientific basis to it.”