As of Thursday, some 120,000 Minnesota residents had received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The first rounds of injections go to health professionals, employees and residents of long-term care facilities.
It is expected to take months before all Minnesota residents are vaccinated, but after nearly a year of suspending some of the richest aspects of life, many are understandably dreaming of a time when they can hug their mother, hold their new grandchild or travel with less fear of COVID-19.
When will that time come?
More to learn
It is difficult to predict when life will return to normal. This is because it is not clear when a sufficient number of people will be vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity”, which refers to a scenario in which so many people have antibodies to COVID-19 that is difficult for the coronavirus that makes it pass from person to person. for person. This is estimated to happen when about 75 to 85 percent of people have been vaccinated.
How quickly collective immunity is achieved depends on how quickly people are vaccinated, said Dr. Jill Foster, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine and M Health Fairview.
If there are significant logistical problems or if many people refuse the vaccine or are late in getting it, it will take longer to achieve collective immunity. If the process goes well, it is easy for people to get their vaccines and many people decide to get vaccinated, “I would say that in June, we will have a sufficiently immunized population so that people can return almost normal,” said Foster.
Because of the importance of making a vaccine available quickly, the clinical testing process has been accelerated: pharmaceutical companies have carried out several phases of clinical tests simultaneously, instead of doing them one after another, and the federal government paid to manufacture candidate vaccines before approved, so that people could be vaccinated immediately, when vaccines were considered safe. But no shortcuts have been cut that would compromise safety testing of the vaccine, health officials said.
The tests suggest that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are quite effective, estimated to prevent COVID-19 disease 95 percent of the time.
“Having a vaccine is like having a bulletproof vest. It helps you, but if you’re going to an area where bullets are flying everywhere, you still won’t be safe, ”said Foster.
Foster said there is still a lot that we still don’t know about them that can affect how quickly life gets back to normal. This includes the effectiveness of the vaccine over age and whether vaccines prevent not only people from getting sick with the disease, but also preventing them from passing it on to others.
Some good news, though? These big questions about the vaccine should be answered in the coming months, as more people get vaccinated.
Calculated risks
Now, three things are important to remember: first, vaccination significantly reduces your chances of getting sick because of COVID-19. Two, we still don’t know how far the vaccine prevents you from transmitting COVID-19 to others, even if you are not sick. And three, and perhaps most importantly, receiving the vaccine does not mean that the world with COVID-19, as we know, is over for you.
Since vaccines are not 100% effective in preventing disease and may not block transmission, Minnesota residents will need to keep their personal behavior under control: continue to wear masks and distance themselves socially, even if they have been vaccinated, until immunity from herd is achieved.
“The frontline people who are getting the vaccine – we are getting the vaccine because we work in high-risk areas. We are not getting the vaccine, so we can stop using the mask tomorrow, ”said Dr. Aditya Shah, an infectious disease consultant at the Mayo Clinic.
Erin Clark / Pool via REUTERS The tests suggest that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are quite effective, estimated to prevent severe COVID-19 disease 95 percent of the time.
All of this does not mean that things will not change when a large number of Minnesotans are vaccinated against COVID-19. Even before collective immunity is achieved, people will be able to take calculated risks on, say, visits to family members, Shah said.
“In May, if the majority of the public has the vaccine, you have the vaccine, your family members have the vaccine and you still follow the rules of social distance and masking, then it would be safer,” he said. to see the family, said Shah. That’s because people who are following these recommendations are much less likely to bring COVID-19 to a meeting.
What does it mean to visit grandma?
“There is nothing perfectly safe or perfectly unsafe,” said Foster. “People are going to have to make choices, you know, I really want to see Grandma, so maybe in the next two weeks, I won’t go to a bar,” or participate in other activities that could lead to COVID-19 broadcast.