Now that more than 12 percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and the federal government has pledged to increase the number of vaccines getting into people’s arms, many of us are wondering what that all means for those of us that have had the vaccine and for the people we love. Can I go out after getting the vaccine? Do I still need to wear a mask? Can I still pass COVID-19 on to my family, even if I’m vaccinated?
While more and more data is coming out about the currently available and developing vaccines, here’s what we know so far about your immunity after the COVID-19 vaccine.
How long after getting the COVID-19 vaccine are you immune?
Can you get the COVID-19 vaccine after having had COVID?
Yes, says the CDC. And you should. Although it’s not common, there have been reported cases of reinfection.
A COVID-19 infection produces antibodies, but those start to wane over time, pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Frank Esper of the Cleveland Clinic said on Cleveland Clinic.org.
“I expect that mostly everyone, including people who may have had a bout with the virus earlier on in this pandemic, are probably going to get vaccinated. Again, antibodies are waning and the immune system is going down. So, maybe the vaccine will give your immune system a boost. And we definitely know that the immune system loves boosting your first infection — it has a big response, but then it goes away fairly quickly. But if you get a second infection, that tells your immune system, ‘Hold on. This is something I’m going to be seeing a lot of.’ When that happens, your immune system goes into a second round of protection that lasts a lot longer than the first round of protection. And so giving the immune system a boost, even if you’ve had the infection, is probably going to be something that’s going to happen.”
So let’s say we’re lucky enough to be in the 12 percent of people to get two doses of the vaccine. But what about the other COVID variants we keep hearing about?
Does the COVID vaccine protect me against the new COVID variants, like the one found in South Africa?
As if the coronavirus weren’t scary enough, in the last couple of months new variants of the virus began mutating around the world. In South Africa, the new variant is now the dominant strain, and last week the government there stopped the rollout of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine because it wasn’t working against the new strain, according to The New York Times.
The new variants have been found in more than 30 states and appear to be more transmissable. To fight the new variants will mean modifying vaccines, Dr. Fauci told the Washington Post on C-Span, and stopping the spread of the virus. How can that happen?
“The best way to prevent the evolution of mutations is to supress the replication of the virus in the community, which means we need to vaccinate as many people as quickly as we possibly can and as efficiently as we possibly can,” Dr. Fauci said.
