Jan 25, 2021 How Long Does the Protection Last from the COVID-19 Vaccine?

John F. Bonamo, M.D., MS, FACOG, FACPE, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical and Quality Officer, RWJBarnabas Health, addresses the question of how long you would be protected from COVID-19 by the mRNA vaccines. 

TRANSCRIPT:

Of course, the million-dollar question is, how long will I be safe if I’ve had the disease and or if I've gotten the COVID-19 vaccine?

The answer to that is we really don't know the answer.

However, we have started to understand the virus better.

So, we are about one full year into the pandemic and we know that people are not getting sick again.

People are not coming back to our emergency departments with a re-infection of COVID now.

COVID, unfortunately, does linger in some people and they have a post-COVID syndrome where they still have symptoms.

That's different from being reinfected.

We are not seeing people with new COVID infections which tells us that the natural immunity that they had from getting the virus has protected them.

Now, in many cases, for at least one year, we can only follow it and see what that does. The immunity that they get from the vaccine, especially with two doses of the vaccine, will probably even be a higher level of antibody in their system, which will probably give them an even longer period COVID free, or virus free. But again, this is something we will learn as time goes by.