If you have been away from home and have lived your life since you were completely vaccinated, you may be curious if you have come in contact with the coronavirus. Could you be one of the lucky ones who had an asymptomatic infection? Or, are there still many chances that you have not yet found the virus?
The delta variant is everywhere, and spreads much faster than previous variants. Many people infected with delta are extremely contagious and have viral loads hundreds of times larger than they would have with the original strain. So if you go to places like restaurants or gyms with a lot of strangers, it seems inevitable that you are exposed at some point.
“It really is so transmissible that I think there are a lot of possibilities, depending on the community transmission rate in your area, if you have a substantial or high transmission rate in your CDC definitions – that maybe it has been exposed ”, he said Monica Gandhi, a specialist in infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said it is crucial to differentiate between exposure and infection. Being exposed or in the presence of a virus does not necessarily mean that you become infected or that you develop symptomatic illnesses (although some people, regardless of their vaccination status, will definitely do so).
Delta is so transmissible that if you’ve been away from home in a high-traffic area (and you weren’t wearing a mask or social distancing), chances are you’ve been exposed, according to Gandhi. As case rates increase, so does the likelihood of coming into contact with the virus.
There’s a good chance many of us have been around the virus, but whether that exposure caused an infection depends on a few factors, Nuzzo said.
The first consideration is the degree of approach to the infected person who was shedding virus. The second is the amount of virus that this person caused, as some people spread much more viruses than others. The third is ventilation: if you were exposed in a poorly ventilated room, the virus is more likely to have been able to enter the cells. The host, or how your body treats the virus, also plays an important role.
Can you tell if it has been exposed?
It depends. Probably many vaccinated people who were exposed would not notice. They may have produced an immune response that successfully fought the virus before it could cause symptomatic illness. This, after all, is the goal of vaccines.
You I could be able to perceive the activation of your immune system. After a close exposure, the B cells in memory will begin to sway and produce antibodies, Gandhi explained, and the T cells will adapt to fight. It is possible that some people may feel this immune response, which may seem similar to some of the side effects experienced after vaccination, as they were signs that your immune system was improving.
“In the current context, where we are all hyper-alert to symptoms, people may feel tired or fatigued,” Gandhi said.
Does exposure to COVID mean you are better protected?
This is complicated. Some research suggests that being exposed to infectious doses of SARS-CoV-2 strengthens the immune response.
“There is known evidence that exposure to infection after taking a dose of vaccine strengthens the immune response. It causes memory B cells to produce antibodies, which makes T cells reproduce,” Gandhi said. . (Those new antibodies produced by B cells, by the way, will target the new variant you see.)
We definitely need more data on how exposures affect our immune memory. UK scientists drive challenge tests, in which young and healthy adults are exposed to the coronavirus to better understand the doses that cause the infection and how people’s immune systems respond to exposure to the virus.
However, that it doesn’t it means you want to get infected or get sick. There really isn’t a great way to predict if you’re going to get sick, what disease you’re going to get, or if you’re going to develop long-term symptoms if you get sick.
This is especially true if you are not vaccinated without natural immunity from the previous infection. “The best thing about getting vaccinated is that you’re much less likely to get sick, though [exposure] it will stimulate your immune response, ”Gandhi said.
Remember: traits prevent disease, not infection.
“If you have a good enough virus, there’s a good chance you’ll get infected,” Nuzzo said. He added that the hope is that vaccines will prevent people from getting seriously ill. And in some cases, they will prevent people from getting any disease.
The growing consensus among infectious disease specialists is that we will all find COVID at some point. Delta, being as transmissible as it is, has changed the game: COVID is becoming endemic.
“I don’t think we will eliminate it,” Gandhi said. “To me, that means we’re likely to be exposed to everyone at some point.”
And if we are exposed to COVID, it is best to do so with some immunity. Get these vaccines.
Experts are still learning about COVID-19. The information in this story is what was known or available from the publication, but orientations may change as scientists find out more about the virus. Consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the most up-to-date recommendations.