Vaccine update
Please see the previous post for places to call and sign up for the currently available Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Be sure to look in the comments section as others have added additional resources.
As of this post, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines remain highly effective and overall very safe. It is anticipated that there will be a greater supply coming to Colorado in the next few weeks.
The Pfizer vaccine has been associated with about 0.5% of folks having a severe reaction and the Moderna about 1.4%.
The main contraindications to getting these vaccines are:
- anaphylactic reaction to the first vaccine
- immediate anaphylactic reaction to any previous medication. This means an immediate life-threatening reaction after the first administration of any medication. This does not include developing a rash or hives days after starting an antibiotic, even if you experienced this delayed reaction to multiple antibiotics.
A Chinese vaccine being studies in Brazil was found to prevent COVID-19 50% of the time. As mentioned before, this is a pretty low standard, but a number of countries have ordered the vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have set a pretty high standard to follow.
The Johnson & Johnson single dose vaccine is planning to release results soon but are quoted to be two months behind on their production targets.
Reinfection after the first COVID-19 infection
A recent study from the UK suggests that 0.6% may have a second COVID-19 illness in the five months after their first infection. Of those who had a “second infection” (44/6613) all had antibodies at the start of the study but were not tested at the time of their previous infection. We know some of these tests can be notoriously inaccurate with significant false positive rates. Which antibody test used was not disclosed. Only during the “second” infection did they test positive by nasal swab testing.
This leaves some uncertainty about the validity of the 0.6% number, which is still a small number. Further peer review is pending.
Convalescent plasma
Finally reliable information came out about convalescent plasma use in COVID-19.
The researchers divided the plasma into three categories based on the amount of antibodies to the SARS-CoV2 virus in each plasma sample.
The short answer is that if you got the high-titer plasma within 3 days of the onset of symptoms, you had about a 25% less chance of dying over the next 30 days compared to getting the low or medium titer plasma.
This results make this a much less useful treatment, since giving plasma to everyone within 3 days of the onset of symptoms is neither practical nor prudent.
