CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – If you have successfully avoided the virus, it is time to get a new booster.
“The ideal waiting period is two months or after when you’ve gotten a booster. For most people who’ve gotten a booster, they’re several months past that already so most people can go ahead and just get their booster now,” said Doctor Taison Bell with UVA Health.
If you have just been diagnosed with COVID, the response is somewhat different.
“I actually had COVID at the end of August, so I’ll just talk about my case,” Dr. Bell said. “I’m going to delay by about two to three months or so, in between there to get vaccinated, so we’re looking at maybe late October, early November for me to get the vaccine. and then I’m set up well going into the winter.”
After a recent COVID infection, Dr. Bell thinks there is a window of time for vaccination.
“The earliest part of that window is after you recover from your acute symptoms or if you don’t have symptoms, when you’ve cleared isolation requirements for the test, that’s the earliest you’d want to get it, and then at the latest it would be the three month mark. Three months is kind of that time period where your immunity starts to go,” Dr. Bell said.
The Blue Ridge Health District says that more than 540 doses of the bivalent booster have been administered since it came out.
“We expect that number to increase as word gets out that we have both Pfizer and Moderna’s bivalent available, so we’ll start to see even more folks show up at the health department clinics,” said BRHD COVID-19 Vaccine Manager Jen Fleisher. “The interest has been, as we expected, pretty high particularly in this district. So certainly in the Albemarle and Charlottesville area, it’s very high and then a tripling of interest in our localities, which is great.”
Appointments for COVID-19 bivalent booster shots may be scheduled via BRHD or pharmacies.
