Reports across the country may play a cruel irony: someone is testing positive for coronavirus, even if they have already received one or both doses of Covid-19 vaccine.
Notable examples
It has recently happened to at least three members of Congress:
– Adriano Espaillat, DN.Y.
– Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.
– Lori Trahan, D-Mass.
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But he has also been reported to people in other walks of life, including Rick Pitino, the Hall of Fame basketball coach and nurse in California.
How can this happen?
Experts say such cases are not surprising and do not indicate that there was anything wrong with the vaccines or how they were administered. Here’s why.
– Vaccines do not work instantly. It takes a few weeks for the body to build up immunity after receiving a dose. And the vaccines currently used in the United States, from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, both require a second shot a few weeks after the first to achieve maximum effectiveness.
– It doesn’t even work retroactively. You may already be infected and do not know it when you receive the vaccine – even if you have recently given negative results. This infection can continue to develop after you get the shot, but before its protection completely catches on, and then it appears in a positive test result.
– Vaccines prevent disease, but maybe not infections. Covid vaccines are licensed depending on how well they prevent you from getting sick, needing hospitalization, and dying. Scientists do not yet know how effective vaccines are at preventing coronavirus infection or preventing you from passing it on to others. (Therefore, vaccinated people should continue to wear masks and maintain social distance.)
– Even the best vaccines are not perfect. The efficacy rates for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are extremely high, but not 100%. With the virus still out of control in the United States, some of the millions of people recently vaccinated have had to become infected anyway.