You Got the COVID Vaccine. Now What?

If you chose to get the COVID-19 vaccine when you became eligible, does that mean you can resume your pre-COVID lifestyle? In short, no. The vaccine is not a passport to return to pre-pandemic life and you will still need to take safety precautions after you get the vaccine in order to keep yourself, your loved ones, and your community safe—and to slow the virus’ transmission.

First, remember that vaccines don’t work instantly. You don’t get immunity until 7-14 days after the first dose depending on the vaccine you received. And you won’t get full immunity until 7-14 days after getting the required second dose—21 or 28 days after the first one, depending on which one you got. “You still have to be careful after you get the vaccine,” says Soma Mandal, M.D., a board-certified internist at Summit Medical Group in Berkeley Heights, NJ, and author of Dear Menopause, I Do Not Fear You. “It takes some time for your body to build immunity.”

While these vaccines aren’t perfect, their efficacy was found to be nearly 95-percent in trials. That said, “the vaccine would ideally work if every single person in the United State had the vaccine,” Dr. Mandal says. “Then we wouldn’t need to be as cautious.”

Wondering what else you should keep in mind after getting the COVID vaccine? Here are some other questions that may be on your mind.

Do I need to wear a mask after I get the vaccine?

Don’t toss that mask supply just yet. You’ll be wearing this new fashion accessory indefinitely. You should also continue to social distance and wash your hands frequently because of the chance that you might be one of the unlucky 5 percent of people who didn’t develop a strong immune response from the vaccine, says David Buchholz, M.D., senior founding medical director for primary care at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in NYC. “As long as there is COVID in our community, we need to continue to take precautions.”

Researchers aren’t sure how long immunity lasts from the vaccine. Plus, the virus is mutating around the world, creating variations that seem to be more contagious. “Whether the vaccines will be effective against those variants is still yet to be determined. The vaccine can give you a false sense of security,” says Niket Sonpal, M.D., adjunct assistant professor of clinical medicine in the Department of Basic Biomedical Sciences at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York City. “We don’t want people to let their guard down.”

Also, you may be asymptomatic, meaning you don’t show symptoms, but you have a low level of the virus in your system that is transmittable to others. “You should do what you did before you got the vaccine, until experts tell us it’s safe not to do so,” says Louis Calderon, R.N., at Catholic Hospital in Bethpage. “Pretend like you didn’t even get [the vaccine]. There is still a tiny chance that you can get COVID. For some people, that five percent can matter. We need everyone to get the vaccine for it to work.”

Can we visit with elderly grandparents if I am vaccinated?

Since the pandemic started, Dr. Mandal’s children have only seen her mother, their grandmother, on FaceTime as they didn’t feel comfortable having an in-person visit. Once Dr. Mandel’s mother received her first dose of the vaccine, Dr. Mandal felt more comfortable. So, she, her mother, and her elementary school-aged daughter met up outside with masks on and social distancing in effect.