ATLANTA — A great grandmother who participated in a Moderna trial is still waiting to find out if she was injected with the actual vaccine.
Yvette Johnson has 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, but she’s not your typical grandmother. She volunteered herself to be a participant in the Moderna trials for the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Atlanta woman said she did it for her grandchildren.
“I’ve got all this information breaking down what’s in the vaccine,” Johnson told Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes.
She got her first shot on Sept. 28 and her second shot about a month later. Health officials will be monitoring her for the next two years.
“They’ll tell us any day now if we got the placebo or if we got the actual vaccine. If we didn’t get the vaccine, we’ll immediately get the vaccine and I’m comfortable with that,” Johnson said.
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The only thing that made has made her uncomfortable in this whole process was in the beginning, when government officials announced this would be done at “warp speed.”
“That freaked me out a lot because I didn’t want to be part of an experiment or someone trying to pull something politically. But I prayed about it and I really feel like African Americans need to be represented,” Johnson said.
And so far, she feels fine.
“I had a slight fever but nothing debilitating, the site itself was sore and a little red and muscle aches. I already had arthritis and some other stuff, so it wasn’t any worse than that,” Johnson said.
Johnson said this personal sacrifice has made her a part of history and most of all, she believes this is the best gift she could ever give her grandchildren.
“That’s the best thing Jesus ever let me do is be somebody’s grandma and I’m really, really good at it,” Johnson said.
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