Vaccination should not make you forget about the importance of health guidelines. This is the message several doctors want to convey as they are worried to see French infected by Covid-19 despite their first injection given a few days earlier. This is what they call the “vaccinee syndrome”. Once the first dose of Covid vaccine given, some of the French tend to slacken their efforts and forget about complying with health guidelines.
“As soon as we are vaccinated and we meet with family and friends, we tend to get closer, to shake hands, to kiss each other, but we must keep in mind the fact that the virus is still circulating”, Paris La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital head of ICU Jean-Michel Constantin reminds on Europe 1.
These first-injection vaccinees consider this first shot will prevent them from being infected by the virus as the first two weeks following the first injection are actually crucial in the production of antibodies. The latter are necessary to be protected from coronavirus.
“They see their first doses as a totem, while the very first antibodies only appear at the end of the two weeks, and then increase step by step”, infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido from Garches hospital tells Le Parisien.
Furthermore, for mRNA vaccines to be 95% effective – namely Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna – you need to wait for two weeks after the second injection, said to be essential.