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- The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines is a step towards normalcy, but that doesn’t mean you should stop wearing a mask.
- Wearing a mask and social distancing are key to keeping yourself and others safe as we wait for the vaccine to become more widely available.
- The vaccine won’t protect you right away, and we still don’t know if it stops you from getting the virus or just stops you from getting sick.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Three coronavirus vaccines – from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca – have been approved in the US, UK, 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 distancing will continue to be needed until the majority of people around the world have been vaccinated and we know more about how the vaccine works in the long term.
“I think people’s perception is that you get the vaccine and you’re safe and we can finally stop all this masking and social distancing, but that’s not really the reality,” Debra Goff, specialist pharmacist in infectious diseases and a professor at Ohio State University, said Anna Medaris Miller of Insider.
The reality is, we don’t yet know if the vaccine protects people from the contraction and spread of COVID-19 or if it is simply preventing them from getting seriously ill. Also, although the vaccine will protect you against 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 your neighbor you must continue to wear this mask” and maintain a physical distance from others, said Goff.
You need both outlets to be fully protected from COVID-19
COVID-19 vaccines contain tiny pieces of genetic material meant to teach your immune system how to fight the coronavirus. These messenger RNA fragments can’t make you sick with COVID-19, but they take time to do their jobs.
The Pfizer vaccine, for example, is only 52% effective in preventing COVID-19 after the first dose. The second shot, administered three weeks later, brings that number to 95%.
It is possible to contract COVID-19 during the period between the first and second shot. In fact, a California nurse said she tested positive for COVID-19 on Boxing Day – just over a week after receiving her first shot of the vaccine.
Doctors have said this scenario is inevitable because people don’t even start to develop antibodies for 10 to 14 days after receiving the first vaccine. During the time interval between doses, it is essential to wear a mask to protect yourself and others.
You may also need to wear a mask to protect people who have not yet received the two 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 have access to the vaccine throughout winter and spring, it will not be widely available to anyone who wants it until. summer, Hilary Brueck and Aria Bendix previously. reported for Insider.
And that’s just the American timeline. The pandemic won’t be officially over until the whole 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’s not clear to me that we can go back and do big sporting events or open the bars because like Australia or South Korea, the risk of reinfection looming, ”Gates said. on the podcast. “So while it’s 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 nearly 100% effective. Given the patchwork of blanket we are looking at, it is important to wear a mask and stay away from others until the majority of the population is immune to the coronavirus.
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