- The arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines signals a step towards normality, but it does not mean that you should stop wearing a mask.
- Masking and social detachment are vital to keeping you and others safe while we wait for the vaccine to become more widely available.
- The vaccine will not protect you immediately and we still don’t know if it prevents you from getting the virus or just prevents 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 United States, the United Kingdom or both. While getting vaccines to the people who need them most is a big step in the right direction, it doesn’t mean the pandemic is over.
Precautions such as wearing masks and social detachment will continue to be necessary until most people around the world have been vaccinated and we know more about how the injection works in the long run.
“I think the perception of people is that you get the vaccine and you’re safe, and finally, we can stop all that masking and social detachment and stuff, but that’s not really the reality,” Debra Goff, an infectious disease pharmacist and Ohio State University professor, said Anna Medaris Miller of Insider.
The reality is that we still don’t know if the vaccine protects people from contracting and spreading COVID-19 or if it just prevents them from getting noticeably sick. Furthermore, even if the vaccine protects you from contracting the virus, it will not be fully effective until after the second dose – about a month after the first injection.
So in the meantime, “for the sake of humanity, you must continue to wear this mask” and keep your physical distance from others, said Goff.
You need both photos to be fully protected against COVID-19
The COVID-19 vaccines contain tiny pieces of genetic material designed to teach your immune system how to fight the coronavirus. These bits of messenger RNA cannot make you sick with COVID-19, but it does take some time for them 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, raises that number to 95%.
It is possible to hire COVID-19 in the period between the first and the second shot. In fact, a California nurse reported a positive test for COVID-19 the day after Christmas – just over a week after he received his first injection of the vaccine.
Doctors said this scenario was bound to happen eventually, since people don’t even start to develop antibodies until 10-14 days after receiving their first injection. During the interval 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 two doses of the vaccine
Most Americans will have to wait until May to get their photos – and that’s a pretty conservative estimate. Although priority groups such as health professionals, the elderly and people with pre-existing illnesses slowly gain access to the vaccine during winter and spring, it will not be widely available to anyone who wants it until summer, Hilary Brueck and Aria Bendix previously reported to Insider.
And that’s just the US timeline. The pandemic will not officially end until the entire world has access to the vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates said in a podcast in November.
“If we have the disease elsewhere in the world, it is not clear to me whether we can go back and do major sporting events or open the bars because, as in Australia or South Korea, the risk of reinfection will be imminent there,” said Gates on the podcast. “So, while in the world, I’m not sure if we will be completely back to normal.”
It is also possible that some vaccines are more effective in some populations than others, added Fauci – and not all vaccine options will be nearly 100% effective. Given the patchwork cover we are looking at, it is important to wear a mask and keep your distance from others until the majority of the population is immune to the coronavirus.