Viet Fact Check: Can you skip the COVID-19 vaccine if you’ve already had COVID-19?
Source: VietFactCheck | (Tiếng Việt)
Claim: Some Vietnamese-Americans believe that you do not have to get vaccinated from COVID-19 if you already had the disease.
Rating: This claim is FALSE. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that you get vaccinated from Covid-19 even if you have had it because scientists do not know how long natural immunity lasts. It is also rare, but possible, to become reinfected with COVID-19.
Below are the reasons you should get vaccinated for the COVID-19 vaccine even if you have had COVID-19.
1: Scientists do not know how long natural immunity lasts.
Natural immunity is the antibody protection that you gain from a previous encounter with an infection. Because COVID-19 is new, scientists have not determined how long natural immunity lasts.
How long does vaccine-induced immunity from COVID-19 lasts? According to the CDC, scientists are still determining how long a person who has received the COVID-19 vaccine will have immunity for. Both Pfizer and Moderna, who manufactured the COVID-19 vaccines, have been monitoring the effects of the vaccine since July 2020. Both companies intend to follow the effects of the vaccines for 2 years in order to determine if the vaccines’ protection wears off and if there are any long-term side-effects.
2: It is rare, but possible, to become reinfected with COVID-19.
Cases of reinfection, meaning getting COVID-19 again after you’ve had it, have been reported, but remain rare. But current evidence suggests that reinfection is uncommon within 90 days of the first infection.
3: COVID-19 can cause severe medical complications.
People of all ages and medical conditions can get sick enough from COVID-19 to require hospitalization, and it can lead to death. To date, more than 500,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. If they survive, they may suffer from long-term effects such as fatigue, brain fog, and shortness of breath for weeks and months after the infection. So it is beneficial to be vaccinated from COVID-19 so you don’t run the risk of becoming re-infected and getting complications from the disease.
For the reasons described above, the CDC recommends that you receive a COVID-19 vaccine even if you already had it. Because COVID-19 is such a new disease and scientists are learning more about it every day, it is better to be safe than sorry and get vaccinated whenever you are eligible.
