Here’s Why You Should, Wear a Mask, After Getting Vaccinated.
As COVID-19 vaccines roll out across the world, many people are wondering what that means for current mask-wearing protocols.
Although vaccines are proven to prevent serious illness, it’s unclear whether they completely curb COVID-19 infection.
It’s possible that some vaccinated people could still be silent spreaders of the virus.
When it comes to respiratory infections such as COVID-19, the nose is a main point of entry into the human body.
Viruses rapidly multiply in the nose and prompt the immune system to produce antibodies specific to mucosa.
Mucosa is a type of moist tissue that is unique to your nose, mouth, lungs and stomach.
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If exposed to the virus a second time, those antibodies are able to shut it down in the nose before it has the chance to travel deeper into the body.
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This is why mucosal vaccines, such as FluMist, are more effective at fending off respiratory viruses.
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The current COVID-19 vaccines are not mucosal.
They are injected deep into a person’s muscles to stimulate an immune response.
This protects the vaccine recipient from getting ill, but the virus could still bloom in the nose and be sneezed or breathed out onto others.
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Preventing severe disease is easiest, preventing mild disease is harder, and preventing all infections is the hardest … If it’s 95 percent effective at preventing symptomatic disease, it’s going to be something less than that in preventing all infections, for sure, University of Arizona Immunologist Deepta Bhattacharya, via ‘The New York Times’.
Moderna and Pfizer are currently examining past participants in order to determine whether they became infected with COVID-19 after receiving the vaccine.
