Sergeant Jennifer Callender (L) of the Illinois Air National Guard will administer a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to Virginia Persha on February 3, 2021 at a vaccination center located at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois.
Kamil Krzaczynski | AFP | Getty Images
The deployment of life-saving coronavirus vaccines gives hope that life will soon return to a time before the pandemic, where we were not advised to wear a mask almost everywhere.
But even if you’re one of the lucky few to have received a Covid-19 shot, it will be important to keep wearing a face cover until researchers can determine whether the vaccines are preventing people from spreading the virus to others who aren’t vaccinated. White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci Thursday.
“At the moment we don’t have enough data to say with confidence that the vaccines can prevent transmission,” Fauci said in a tweet during an online question and answer session. “So even if you are vaccinated, you can still spread the virus to vulnerable people.”
However, what the clinical trials of the vaccines have shown is that the drugs are very effective in preventing symptomatic infections in people who have been vaccinated. Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the only two in the US to receive an emergency permit to date, have proven to be approximately 95% effective in preventing symptomatic infection in people staggered two weeks apart. received doses.
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, a single-dose shot that is yet to receive the same federal government approval, reported Friday that the vaccine was 66% overall effective at protecting against Covid-19 in clinical trials. While it is lower than the others, it is still above the threshold set by the federal government – about 50% – to get an emergency permit.
In addition, the company’s drug was 85% effective at preventing people from becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 four weeks after their injection. J & J’s vaccine could become available in March if it meets the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s standards for emergency use, Fauci said.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also urged people to accept the available vaccine as soon as it is their turn.
Researchers are currently collecting follow-up data from people who have participated in clinical trials to determine if the amount of virus they carry in their noses has decreased after vaccination, or if there are “ significantly fewer ” cases of people showing no symptoms over the course of their infection.
That would indicate “a reduced ability to transmit the virus after vaccination,” Fauci said.
Read more: If new Covid vaccines are about to debut in the US, here’s what you need to know about the shots
Masks, along with other measures, such as frequent hand washing and social distancing, have been a crucial tool in suppressing the spread of Covid-19, medical experts claim.
The virus spreads from person to person via respiratory droplets that travel through the air when someone talks, coughs, sneezes, sings, or shouts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Facial covers act as a barrier that can keep those drops from spraying onto others.
There is now some evidence that the masks may also provide the wearer with some protection against the virus, the CDC says, but how well it works will likely depend on the type of mask.
It’s also important to remember that most Americans have not yet been vaccinated, said Dr. Joshua Barocas, a professor at Boston University School of Medicine. According to recent data from the CDC, only nearly 34 million doses of vaccine have been administered to date.
“We don’t know who hasn’t been vaccinated. We don’t wear it as a badge on our jacket. We don’t wear our immune function, we don’t show our risk factors on our shirts,” Barocas said during an organized phone call. by the Infectious Diseases Society of America on Wednesday. “We need a continuous multi-layered approach.”