As coronavirus vaccines are becoming more widely available to the public, new questions are popping up. Like: Which vaccine is best for me? And: What if I test positive for COVID between vaccine doses? WHQR has answers.
“Open up the test tube and be very careful with it because it does have liquid in there.”
I’m at a CVS drive-thru, administering a COVID test to myself in my car. It’s windy today; my Camry shakes gently as I swirl the white q-tip up each nostril.
“Just drop the test tube inside of that bag for me, and then close it up.”
I got my first dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine a couple weeks ago, then had an exposure scare. If I tested positive, I wanted to know, would that affect if, or when, I got my second dose?
“What the CDC is saying is yes, you do need to get your second dose.”
That’s Carla Turner, New Hanover County’s Assistant Health Director.
“What they recommend is that you do that after you are quote unquote recovered from COVID and that's 10 days after symptom onset. If your symptoms have improved and you've not had a fever for at least 24 hours without using fever, reducing medicine. After that, you can go ahead and get your second dose.”
It’s kind of stunning, to think back to 12 months ago, when many predictions said a coronavirus vaccine would take years. And now there’s not one, but three vaccines available in the U.S. Although speedy, Turner says folks can trust the science.
“I think it's important for people to understand that the technology that was used to develop these vaccines is technology that, that the scientific community has been working on for decades. And it's important for people to know there is nothing in the COVID vaccine that has anything to do with the infectious part of COVID. There's no live part of the virus in that vaccine that is going to make you, uh, become infected with COVID.”
And that’s true for all three of the vaccines currently available. While efficacy data varies between the vaccines, Turner says the best vaccine...is the one in front of you.
“So if that's Pfizer, get the Pfizer, that's Moderna get Moderna. If that's Johnson and Johnson, get that one, but the best one is the one that's available to you today”
The day after my drive-thru test, my test results came back negative. I’ll get my second shot in a few weeks, as planned.
Turner says if there’s a dose available to you, take it.
“Everything that we're hearing from the CDC on down is the best vaccine for you is the one available to you right now. The quicker we vaccinate, hopefully the less chance of more variants developing. If we all get vaccinated quickly and the quicker we vaccinate, maybe the quicker we can start to return to some sense of normalcy in our lives.”