Should you get your COVID vaccine if you currently have coronavirus? What to know
If you are waiting to receive your scheduled first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine but are currently infected with the coronavirus, there are a few guidelines health officials want you to know.
First and foremost, people who know they are infected — symptomatic or asymptomatic — should postpone their first or second dose vaccine appointment until symptoms have disappeared and criteria have been met to leave isolation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If you have COVID-19 symptoms, the CDC says you can leave isolation:
At least 10 days after your symptoms started
At least 24 hours after your fever went away without the use of fever-reducing medications
If you never develop coronavirus symptoms, you can leave isolation 10 days after the day you receive your positive test result.
Once you’re cleared of COVID-19, you may call your health care or vaccine provider to schedule a new appointment for your first or second dose.
Both authorized COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. require two doses about a month apart. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires a 21-day interval between the first and second dose, and the Moderna shot a 28-day period, “however, there is no maximum interval between the first and second doses for either vaccine,” the CDC said.
If it’s not possible to get the timing right, the agency said second doses for the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine can be delayed by up to six weeks after the first shot, although there’s limited data on how effective the vaccines are beyond that window.
The CDC does not recommend getting a COVID-19 diagnostic test or antibody exam before getting vaccinated. Data from clinical trials suggest it’s safe to get a coronavirus shot even if you already had symptomatic or asymptomatic COVID-19.
Health experts and vaccine developers say it’s possible to get infected with the coronavirus after your first dose because two doses are currently required for maximum protection against the disease.
Current evidence shows the risks of getting reinfected with the coronavirus is low in the months after your first bout with the virus, but over time those risks increase. So, the CDC says people who recently had COVID-19 can choose to delay their vaccination plans while supplies remain limited.
“We tell people with recent infection to wait 90 days, just to give others without natural immunity a chance to go first,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told McClatchy News in an email.
If you develop COVID-19 after your first dose but before your second dose of a vaccine, any treatment decisions or timing of treatments should not be affected, the CDC says.
People who live in either health care or non-health care congregate settings such as nursing homes who were knowingly exposed to COVID-19 and are waiting for their test results can still get vaccinated only if they are asymptomatic.
“Facilities should attempt to complete facility-wide testing within a period that allows for test results to be received prior to vaccination in order to isolate those patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection,” the agency says. “However, it is not necessary to wait for test results if this would create delays in vaccination.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 9:21 AM with the headline "Should you get your COVID vaccine if you currently have coronavirus? What to know."
