The University encourages the campus community to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Dr. Ben Garman, medical director at the Notre Dame Wellness Center, is answering questions from faculty and staff about the importance of vaccination.
Here, he answers two questions readers may have.
NDWorks: How long does immunity last after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine?
Dr. Garman: The honest answer is we don't know yet. All the data shows that it lasts at least a year, because that's about as long as the vaccine has existed. But there is good precedent to believe that it will last much longer.
NDWorks: If I had COVID-19, do I need to get the vaccine?
Dr. Garman: For the average person, the vaccine causes your body to make a much greater amount of immunity than if you had actually gotten sick. And that higher amount of immunity is what causes it to last so much longer.
After getting two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, the immune response that your body makes is, in fact, likely at least three times larger than the immune response that the average person will have when (infected with) COVID ... But if you were in the ICU for two weeks and were super, super sick, your body would have made a lot more antibodies than somebody who has the sniffles, or maybe didn't have any symptoms at all.
Each state has its own plan for deciding which groups of people will be vaccinated first. Visit HERE.nd.edu for Indiana and Michigan vaccination eligibility details.
Originally published by at ndworks.nd.edu on March 02, 2021.