The good news is that you have been vaccinated. But experts say you must still wait at least two weeks before throwing any degree of caution to the wind. All three COVID-19 vaccines that have been given emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration require time to take effect.
According to Bustle, the waiting game allows vaccines to do their job. “There are two forms of immunity from vaccines,” Dr. William Greenough III, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told the outlet. First the vaccine creates antibodies in the blood and then it teaches our cells how to recognize the virus and neutralize it, thus granting immunity.
“There’s around a two-week interval for the COVID vaccines because of these two tiers of immunity,” he said. Vaccines that require two shots, like the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, achieve both levels of immunity in two phases. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine that is based on a modified cold virus gets the task done in one shot.
If you get the Pfizer vaccine, the doses will be spread 21 days or three weeks apart, according to Bustle. Dr. Robert Quigley, M.D., senior vice president and global medical director of International SOS, a health and security services firm, said that individuals are considered fully vaccinated “two weeks after the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.”
For people who get the Moderna shots, they are spaced four weeks apart and Quigley says that this vaccine, too, offers full protection against COVID-19 after the second jab. With the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the two-week rule still applies according to experts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s assessment.
The CDC says that fully vaccinated individuals in the U.S. can resume domestic travel and do not need to get tested before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel. They also do not need to get tested prior to international travel unless required by the destination, nor do they have to self-quarantine upon their return.
Data published in January 2021 in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the level of protection of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine actually gets stronger after 28 days. After 14 days the vaccine prevents 85% of COVID-19 driven hospitalizations while at 28 days that number jumps to 100%, according to Bustle.
The CDC says that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 90% effective two weeks after the second jab. The agency offers updated guidance for those who are fully vaccinated, allowing them to visit other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing and giving them the okay to visit non-vaccinated people from a single household who are at low-risk for severe COVID-19.
However, experts told CNN that no vaccine is 100% effective.
“Given the current limited information on how well the vaccines work in the general population, vaccinated persons should continue to protect themselves and others,” said CDC’s Dr. Sarah Mbaeyi.
According to SF Gate, well-known infectious disease expert Dr. Bob Wachter of the University of California at San Francisco, said that getting two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine make your chances of getting really sick from the virus “essentially zero.”
But adhering to COVID-19 safety protocols are still recommended.
“My preference is not to get it period,” he added, noting that even if you are vaccinated there is a still chance you can get mildly ill or transmit the virus to a vulnerable person. And the CDC recommends, large gatherings of any kind are discouraged during the pandemic even if you are vaccinated.
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