My name is Andy, a 30-year-old Belgian citizen originally from a small city in Wallonia called La Louvière but currently living in Brussels. For the past 5 years, I have worked as a nurse specialised in radiotherapy and imaging, which uses ionizing radiation to create images of the body for example to diagnose cancer and tissue defects.
As such, I am in direct contact with fragile patients almost every day. Some of them are in fact affected by COVID-19 or have had the disease before. Therefore, part of our tasks is to analyse its consequences in different organs (heart, lungs, brain, etc.). Through my day-to-day work, I have realised how COVID does not make a distinction based on age as many believe, since not only the elderly but also young people suffer its effects.
To be able to continue to take care of them all, but also to look after myself, I got my first injection of the vaccine one week ago. This follows the vaccination strategy of the Belgian government as the doses are being rolled out first to our elders and first-line workers, and secondly – among other groups – to workers in the healthcare sector such as my colleagues and myself. From my point of view, this makes sense as having a healthy workforce means that we can continue to take care of the most vulnerable.
Even if the lockdown restrictions in Belgium may appear rather severe as compared to other European countries, I believe the government was right to take all measures at hand to ensure we are out of this pandemic as soon as possible. As citizens, we not only have rights but also responsibilities towards our whole society. Like every one of us, I also want to see my friends and family, to be able to hug them, but we need to ensure certain safety conditions first.
While this virus is probably going to stay with us for a while in one form or another, the vaccines are currently one of the most reasonable solutions to the pandemic and a key to get back our lives. With other diseases such as smallpox as an example, history has already shown us that when humans and science come together, we can achieve the impossible.
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