Credit – Getty Images
Welcome to the COVID Questions, TIME advice column. We are trying to make life during the pandemic a little easier, with expert responses to your toughest coronavirus-related dilemmas. Although we cannot and cannot offer medical advice – these questions should go to your doctor – we hope this column will help you to resolve this stressful and confusing period. Have a question? Write to us at [email protected].
Today, EB in New York asks:
I hope my parents and in-laws will be vaccinated soon. My husband, son and I don’t expect to be vaccinated for a long time. How should we think about whether it is safe to spend time together in a mixed vaccine group? Could they take a plane and fly to visit us without a mask and inside the house? Or is there a sufficient risk that we should wait until we are all vaccinated (which can be a long time, especially with children in the mix)? Or share the difference and take care?
To state the obvious, we are in a strange state of limbo now. The vaccines we’ve been looking forward to for almost a year are here, and yet … nothing in our daily life has really changed. Unfortunately, that will be the case for a little while longer.
“The end is in sight,” says Dr. Colleen Kelley, a vaccine researcher and associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, Georgia. “I just don’t know if it is now.”
Vaccinating your loved ones is unmistakably a step forward, says Kelley. It would certainly be safeer to visit their parents or in-laws after receiving two doses of the vaccine, but insuranceHusa the plan is to wait until you and your husband are vaccinated too, she says.
The two coronavirus vaccines currently authorized for use in the United States – those manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – are extremely effective in preventing diseases with COVID-19. This is a great benefit in itself, especially for people at high risk for serious illnesses, such as elderly adults and people with underlying medical conditions.
But the pending question is whether the COVID-19 vaccines also prevent people from being infected asymptomatically with the virus. Early evidence suggests that both injections offer at least some protection against asymptomatic infections, and many experts are optimistic about their chances of interrupting transmission, but the data is still coming together.
If vaccines do not completely prevent asymptomatic infections, even your vaccinated parents can make your family sick if they pick up something during the trip to see you. Or, if you happen to have been exposed to the virus, your parents can carry it around and pass it on to others. And while authorized COVID-19 vaccines are very effective, there is always a small chance that they will fail, leaving your parents at risk of falling ill.
These are all the worst scenarios, of course. But, given the uncertainty and the extent to which COVID-19 is still spreading in the U.S., Kelley says you should wait a little longer to visit your parents and relatives by affinity. If that is not possible, you should take the same precautions that you have heard about for a year: quarantine them beforehand and preferably stay outdoors and masked when possible.
But here’s the good news. After you and your husband are fully vaccinated (along with the general population), Kelley says you can feel much better when spending time with other vaccinated people inside the house and without a mask – even if your child has not yet been vaccinated. vaccinated.
As you suggest, it can take a while for children under 16 to be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination, as pharmaceutical companies have not yet finished testing their vaccines on younger children. But “if the child is the only one who has not been vaccinated, I would say it is a very safe scenario,” says Kelley.
Fortunately, young children are rarely seriously ill with COVID-19, so once all the adults in the room are fully protected, Kelley says you can feel very comfortable with your parents or relatives coming for a visit.
“We are not going to get to zero risk,” says Kelley, “but we are going to get to places that are safer and more protected.”