There is clearly a lot of circulating misinformation leading to mistrust and vaccine hesitancy regarding vaccines for South Africa.

Vaccines DO NOT spread infections. Instead, they are designed to protect you from diseases.

When you get infected by a virus, it infects and hides inside cells in your body so it can multiply unnoticed. Once your immune system notices these changes caused by this invader, it sends out antibodies to respond and fight off the invader.

Vaccines come in handy. They are carefully designed in the laboratory and rigorously tested for safety and efficacy in stages before being rolled out. Vaccines are designed to look exactly like the virus, without containing the part that will cause actual infection and disease.

Once introduced into your body, your immune system recognizes it as it would an actual virus, produces antibodies (special proteins produced by our bodies to fight off infections), so that your body will remember this infecting agent in the future.

Because viruses generally hide in your cells and multiply without being noticed, until later when you are sick and there is actual disease. When you have been vaccinated, once exposed to the virus in the future, your immune system will recognize it before it can hide as it usual.

Your immune system then fights it off without you getting sick. Vaccines offer protection from developing disease for many years. They are safe and effective. A vaccine will not be rolled out if it has not been thoroughly tested for safety and efficacy.

The Covid-19 vaccine is not the first vaccine to be introduced in South Africa. Some may know that there shots your children get at different ages, you also had them as kids. Those are vaccines and they have saved yours and your children's lives.

Some vaccines include: Human papillomavirus protects from cervical cancer, MMR from Measles, mumps, rubella, MMRV from chickenpox, DTaP-IPV protects from Diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, haemophilus influenzae type B, among others.

Vaccine hesitancy is understandable when there is little information being shared with the public. To take charge of our health, we need to get into the habit of scrutinizing and researching all information that is given to us. You don't have to be an "expert" to do this.