The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending you should consider waiting for … [+]
Say you’ve just recovered from having Covid-19. How long should you then wait for it, wait for it, wait to get your next Covid-19 vaccine whether it’s your first ever Covid-19 vaccine, your second dose, your booster, or your bivalent booster? Well, going to get vaccinated while you are still spewing out the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) would not be cool. So you should certainly wait until your definitely not contagious. But you may want to wait for it longer. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is saying that before getting your Covid-19 vaccine or vaccine booster you should consider waiting for three months after you first noticed Covid-19 symptoms or first had a positive Covid-19 test. In fact, a study newly published in the journal Cell suggests that you may want to wait for it, wait for it, wait even longer for your next Covid-19 vaccination.
The reason is priming. No, not Amazon Prime but immune priming. Priming occurs when the cells in your immune system first get exposed to something that your immune system is supposed to react against. To understand priming think of the following lyrics to “I Will Survive” sung by Gloria Gaynor:
“At first I was afraid, I was petrified,
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side,
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong,
And I grew strong,
And I learned how to get along,
And so you’re back.”
The lyrics are about someone growing stronger with time after having experienced a bad breakup. Over time, that person has eventually become better equipped to deal with when that former significant other returns after a while. Similarly, after your immune system gets primed by a SARS-CoV-2 infection, your immune system may take a little bit of time to fully prepare itself to protect against a future exposure to the virus. Waiting a little while gives your immune system an opportunity to adapt cells like T helper cells so that they are specifically tailored against the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2. In turn, these T helper cells can do things like help the B cells of your immune system produce antibodies against the spike proteins that stud the surface of the SARS-CoV-2.
This is why you may want to wait for a while after a bad breakup before dating again and why you may want to wait for a few months before getting the Covid-19 vaccine or booster vaccine. Giving your immune system more time to fully figure things out may allow for an stronger immune response when it sees the spike protein again, such as after you get vaccinated against Covid-19. A stronger immune response, in turn, may result in stronger and longer-lasting immune protection.
That’s why the CDC is recommending waiting for three months. In fact, the study just published in Cell suggests that the optimal wait time may even be longer. The study was conducted by a team from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that included Clarisa M. Buckner, Lela Kardava, Omar El Merhebi, Sandeep R. Narpala, Leonid Serebryannyy, Bob C. Lin, Wei Wang, Xiaozhen Zhang, Felipe Lopes de Assis, Sophie E.M. Kelly, I-Ting Teng, Genevieve E. McCormack, Lauren H. Praiss, Catherine A. Seamon, M. Ali Rai, Heather Kalish, Peter D. Kwong, Michael A. Proschan, Adrian B. McDermott, Anthony S. Fauci, Tae-Wook Chun, and Susan Moir. For the study, the research team followed what happened with 66 people after they had received their third doses of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines. They found that those who had not been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 had strong antibody and memory B cells responses two months after vaccination, which was not a surprise. However, those who had had a SARS-CoV-2 infection within the 180 days prior to their getting the third dose of the vaccine had comparatively lower spike-specific B-cell responses at the two-month mark after vaccination. This suggests that having had Covid-19 sometime during the prior half year could potentially inhibit the B-cell response that you may get from a Covid-19 mRNA vaccine or booster vaccine.
Lack of Covid-19 precautions such as face mask use could lead to another Covid-19 surge this Fall. … [+]
Does this mean that you should always wait at least three months or perhaps even longer after you’ve had Covid-19 to get vaccinated? Not necessarily. If you know that you may be at higher risk for being exposed to the virus such as extensive socializing indoors or traveling, you may want to get up-to-date on your vaccinations beforehand. That means getting getting your primary series or the bivalent Covid-19 mRNA booster if you’ve already completed you primary series. Having had Covid-19 won’t give you 100% protection. It’s not like a full-body concrete condom. In fact, the amount of protection that you may have gotten from a prior SARS-CoV-2 can be quite variable. Getting a Covid-19 vaccine after having recovered from Covid-19 can offer you extra protection against Covid-19.
You may want to get as much protection as you can before the weather really turns colder and drier in November in the Northern Hemisphere. Covid-19 cases really started picking up in the U.S. last November 2021 even before the Omicron variant started spreading. And now the U.S. seems “primed” for another late Fall and Winter surge, especially with so many people having ditched Covid-19 precautions like face mask wearing and social distancing as if they were soiled underwear. Sure you could wait for three months or more to get a Covid-19 vaccine or vaccine booster. But the question is whether the virus will wait before infecting you.
