What is safe after COVID-19 vaccination? Do not pour masks yet

NEW YORK – You’re fully vaccinated against the coronavirus – what now? Don’t expect to lose your mask and immediately resume your normal activities.

It’s going to be a disappointment, if not a shock, for a lot of people.

In Miami, 81-year-old Noemi Caraballo received his second dose on Tuesday and looks forward to seeing friends, getting back to fitness classes and running errands after nearly a year of being extremely careful, even ordering items. online shopping.

“Her line is, ‘I’m tired of talking to cats and parrots,” her daughter Susan Caraballo said. “She wants to do things and talk to people.”

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has yet to change their guidelines: at least for now, people should follow the same rules as everyone else regarding wearing a mask, maintaining a distance of 6 feet and crowd avoidance – even after receiving their second dose of vaccine.

The vaccines used so far require two doses, and experts say above all not to let down after the first dose.

“You’re asking a very logical question,” replied Dr.Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease specialist in the United States, when a 91-year-old Californian woman recently asked if she and her vaccinated friends could resume their games. mah-jongg.

In that webcast exchange, Fauci could only point to the CDC’s recommendations, which so far do not address exceptions for vaccinated people who reunite. “Wait,” he told the woman, saying he expected updates to the guidelines as more and more people received the coveted snaps.

What experts also need to learn: Vaccines are very effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, especially serious illness and death – but no one knows yet how well they block the spread of the coronavirus.

It’s great if the vaccine means that someone who otherwise would have been hospitalized instead has only sniffles, or even no symptoms. But “the question that arises,” Fauci said at a White House coronavirus response briefing last week, is whether a person infected despite vaccination can still unintentionally infect someone with ‘other.

Studies are underway to find out and clues are starting to emerge. Fauci pointed to recent research in Spain showing that the more coronavirus an infected person harbors – something called the viral load – the more infectious they are. This is not surprising, as it is true for other diseases.

Some preliminary findings from Israel have suggested that people infected after the first dose of the vaccine, while only partially protected, had a lower viral load than unvaccinated people who were infected. It is encouraging if the results hold. Israel has vaccinated much of its population and scientists around the world are watching how the epidemic responds as these vaccinations increase.

It is also essential to determine whether vaccines protect against new mutated versions of the virus that spread rapidly in some countries, added Dr Walter Orenstein, an infectious disease expert at Emory University. He has been vaccinated and strictly follows CDC guidelines.

There are practical reasons. “It’s hard to tell who was vaccinated and who didn’t if you just walk around the grocery store,” noted University of Pennsylvania immunologist E. John Wherry.

And experts like Wherry are repeatedly asked: Yes, there are rules for being in public, but what is safe for grandma to do at home, with family, or with close friends, after being vaccinated?

Not everyone’s immune system is boosted in the same way by vaccines – so a person with cancer or a frail elderly person may not get as much protection as a robust 70-year-old.

But most people should feel “more confident about going shopping, for example, or going to see your grandchildren, or hugging your daughter,” Wherry said.

This is because the chances of a fully vaccinated person becoming seriously ill, although not zero, are low.

“Friends who come for dinner, we should always try to follow the guidelines,” Wherry added. “You never know who is compromised, where the vaccine may not work as well.”

What if fully vaccinated people are exposed to an infected person? The CDC recently relaxed those rules: no quarantine until the vaccinated person has no symptoms and it has been at least two weeks but no more than three months since their second dose.

Get in a plane? Vaccinated or not, the CDC still only asks for essential travel.

International travel is an even more difficult prospect. Expect countries that already have different quarantine and testing requirements to develop different post-vaccination guidelines, especially as several types of vaccines, some better proven than others, are in use around the world. . There is also the concern to transmit these disturbing changes from one country to another.

Stay tuned for advice updates as more and more people get vaccinated. Meanwhile, don’t underestimate how important it is for vaccinees to experience less anxiety when shopping or going to work while following public health measures, said Dr Luciana Borio, former scientist of the Food and Drug Administration.

Even with a trip to the grocery store, “there was still this anxiety about” Was it the contact that was going to make me infected? “” Said Borio. “It’s a very powerful change in her life situation.”

Associated Press reporter Kelli Kennedy in Miami contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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