There’s a high possibility that you can already be
infected and not know it (asymptomatic) when you get the vaccine.
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| Photo: COVID-19 Vaccine | InStyleHealth |
There are reports swirling around about some people
test positive for the coronavirus even though they have already received one or
both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
How can this happen?—According to experts, cases like
these are not surprising and do not indicate that there was something wrong
with the vaccines or how the vaccines were administered. So, here let us break
down the reasons why this happens…
Vaccines don’t work instantly. It will take a few
weeks for the body to build up immunity after receiving a dose. The vaccines
from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, both require a second shot a few weeks after
the first to reach full efficacy.
Vaccines don’t work retroactively. You can already be
infected by COVID-19 and not know it when you get the vaccine or even if you
recently tested negative. The infection can continue to develop after you get
the shot but before its immunity fully takes effect, and then show up in a
positive test result.
Vaccines prevent illness, but maybe not infection.
COVID vaccines are being authorized based on how well they keep you from
getting sick, needing hospitalization and dying. Experts don’t know yet how
effective the vaccines are at preventing the coronavirus from infecting you
from the start, or at keeping you from passing it on to others. That is why
it’s important that people who already received the vaccine should keep wearing
the facial masks and maintain social distancing.
Vaccines aren’t perfect. The efficacy rates for
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are extremely high, but they are not 100%.
With the virus still spreading out of control in major countries like in the
United States, some of the recently vaccinated people were still bound to get
infected one way or another.