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- The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines marks a step toward normalcy, but it doesn’t mean you should stop wearing a mask.
- Wearing masks and social distancing are vital to keeping you and others safe while we wait for the vaccine to become more available.
- The vaccine won’t protect you right away, and we don’t yet know if it prevents you from getting the virus or if it just keeps you from getting sick.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
Three coronavirus vaccines, from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Oxford-AstraZeneca, have been approved in the US, the UK, or both. While getting vaccines to the people who need them most is an important step in the right direction, it doesn’t mean the pandemic is over.
Precautions like wearing masks and social distancing will continue to be necessary until most people around the world have been vaccinated and we know more about how the long-term injection works.
“I think the people’s perception is that you get the vaccine and you’re safe and we can finally stop all this masking and social distancing and stuff, but that’s not the reality,” said Debra Goff, infectious disease pharmacist and professor at Ohio State University, Insider’s Anna Medaris Miller told.
The reality is that we don’t yet know if the vaccine protects people from contracting and spreading COVID-19 or if it just keeps them from getting noticeably ill. What’s more, even if the vaccine protects you from catching the virus, it won’t be fully effective until after the second dose, about a month after the first injection.
So in the meantime, “for the sake of others, you should keep wearing that mask” and keep your physical distance from others, Goff said.
You need both shots to be fully protected from COVID-19
COVID-19 vaccines contain small pieces of genetic material intended to teach your immune system how to fight the coronavirus. These messenger RNA fragments can’t make you sick with COVID-19, but it takes them some time to do their job.
The Pfizer vaccine, for example, is only 52% effective in preventing COVID-19 after the first dose. The second injection, when given three weeks later, brings that number to 95%.
It is possible to get COVID-19 during the period between the first and second shots. In fact, a California nurse reported she tested positive for COVID-19 the day after Christmas, just over a week after receiving her first injection of the vaccine.
Doctors said this scenario was destined to happen eventually, as people don’t even start developing antibodies until 10-14 days after receiving the first injection. During the period of time between doses, it is vital to wear a mask to protect yourself and others.
You may also need to wear a mask to protect others who have not yet received both doses of the vaccine.
Most Americans will have to wait until May to get their shots, and that’s a pretty conservative estimate. While priority groups such as healthcare workers, the elderly, and people with pre-existing conditions will slowly gain access to the vaccine during the winter and spring, it won’t be widely available to anyone who wants it until the summer, Hilary Brueck and Aria Bendix. previously. reported for Insider.
And that’s just the US timeline The pandemic won’t officially end until everyone has access to the vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates said in a podcast in November.
“If we have the disease in other parts of the world, it is not clear to me that we can go back and do big sporting events or open bars because, like Australia or South Korea, the risk of reinfection is looming,” Gates said. on the podcast. “So as long as I’m in the world, I’m not sure we’ll be completely back to normal.”
It’s also possible that some vaccines will be more effective in some populations than others, Fauci added, and not all vaccine options will be close to 100% effective. Given the mosaic of coverage we are seeing, it is important to wear a mask and stay away from others until the majority of the population is immune to the coronavirus.
