By Frances Weller | January 21, 2021 at 7:52 PM EST – Updated January 22 at 12:03 AM
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – If you’ve been able to schedule an appointment and get your first COVID-19 vaccine, consider yourself lucky. Phone lines and websites stay jammed with people trying to schedule an appointment. But health experts want you to understand the initial vaccine does not protect you from contracting the virus.
“You can certainly get COVID- 19 on the day of your vaccination,” says Dr. Philip Brown, Chief Physician at NHRMC. “It’s going to take actually over a month for you to get full immunity from any of the available vaccines. So you get about half of that immunity within the first three weeks and the second vaccine really is what make it its full 95% effectiveness.”
Even then, the virus is too new for scientists to know how long immunity will last until they have more data.
Health experts warn that even after getting both vaccinations, you should continue to wear a mask.
“Even if you get the COVID vaccine, we are telling people to continue to mask,” says Dr. West Paul, Chief Clinical Officer at NHRMC. “We continue to ask here even though a large portion of our nurses and physicians have already taken the vaccine, we continue to mask as we do this and wash your hands.”
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