Your most pressing COVID-19 questions: Answers on vaccines, boosters, treatments and more

Of course some vaccinated people will get COVID because the vaccines are not perfect and not everyone’s immune system can respond fully to the vaccine. However, for nearly everyone else, the vaccines are protective against COVID infection.

All currently approved or authorized COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective and reduce your risk of severe illness and death. Vaccination can reduce the spread of disease, which helps protect those who get vaccinated and the people around them. Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalizations has remained high, although it tends to be slightly lower for older adults and for people with weakened immune systems.

Area hospital officials say nearly nine out of 10 of those hospitalized in intensive care units for COVID-19 in the most recent surge and nearly five out of six of the over 370 people who died were unvaccinated.

- Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County

The longstanding Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is being used to track possible COVID-19 side effects. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a proactive system for investigating these side effects, as well as the voluntary V-safe self-reporting system. These monitoring systems are so sensitive that they have identified rare side effects that occur with only a few cases out of a million vaccines.

Serious adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination are rare but might occur. For example, anaphylaxis after COVID-19 vaccination is rare and has occurred in approximately 5 people per 1 million vaccinated in the United States.

The standards for safety for COVID vaccines are rigorous and high. For example, the rare occurrence of side effects with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (such as thrombosis reported in 57 cases out of 18 million J&J doses administered) contributed to the CDC updating its recommendation to prefer Pfizer or Moderna shots over J&J. This further demonstrates that the threshold for safety is high.

The risk of illness, death or long-haul symptoms if an unvaccinated person contracts COVID-19 are much higher than any rare risks of the vaccine.

- Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County

While COVID-19 vaccines were developed rapidly, all steps were taken to make sure they are safe and effective:

Scientists have been working for many years to develop vaccines against viruses like the one that causes COVID-19. This knowledge helped speed up the initial development of the current COVID-19 vaccines. All vaccines in the United States must go through three phases of clinical trials to make sure they are safe and effective. During the development of COVID-19 vaccines, phases overlapped to speed up the process, but all phases were completed.

Before vaccines are available, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration assesses the findings from clinical trials. The FDA determined that three COVID-19 vaccines met FDA’s safety and effectiveness standards and granted those vaccines Emergency Use Authorizations. This allowed the vaccines to be quickly distributed to control the pandemic. Before recommending COVID-19 vaccination for children, scientists conducted clinical trials.

The FDA gave the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine emergency authorization to use in children 5 to 15 and full approval to use in those 16 and older. This week, the FDA gave the Moderna vaccine full approval for individuals 18 and older.

COVID-19 vaccine safety monitoring has been the most intense and comprehensive in U.S. history. Over 540 million vaccine doses have been administered nationwide.. Through several monitoring systems, CDC and FDA continue to provide updated information on the safety of these vaccines.

- Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County

COVID deaths include all the people who would still be alive if they had not caught COVID at the point in time. People with preexisting conditions (such as high blood pressure, heart and vascular disease and diabetes) are more likely to have worse disease and worse outcomes with any respiratory infections. In COVID deaths, whatever the underlying conditions, it is the COVID infection that tips the balance and causes the deaths.

- Public Health-Dayton & Montgomery County

Colón: Fortunately, most people do indeed survive their battle with COVID-19. However, what is often overlooked is that as many as half of patients who develop COVID-19 go on to suffer persistent manifestations beyond their initial symptoms. These can include persistent shortness of breath, fatigue or muscle pains. In some cases, the prolonged problems can be more significant, as some patients with severe illness who do survive may even require lung transplantation due to the extent of damage they suffer from the initial infection. While children have indeed fared better than adults, we are seeing an alarming trend with more children than ever before contracting COVID-19. In the last week, more than 20% of all new COVID-19 cases are occurring in those under the age of 18. Equally concerning is the fact we are also seeing more hospitalizations for children with COVID-19 than we had seen before, as well as various hospitals in other states seeing vastly limited pediatric ICU capacity. Children are also susceptible to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). This potentially devastating process can develop after COVID-19 and can affect the heart, kidneys and other organs. The worry is that this has been seen in children with mild or even asymptomatic infections, demonstrating that survival from infection is not necessarily the only marker to assess the impact of COVID-19 on our health. As in adults, vaccines remain the best way to help protect chin from the dangers of COVID-19, including those that follow the acute illness. It is safe, it is effective and it is our best weapon against this viral threat.

Pook: The vaccine has been carefully tested, starting as far back as spring of 2020. In addition to the millions of people who received the vaccine under the EUA, the original participants are being closely monitored for adverse effects. In terms of heart health, stroke risk, and risk of blood clots, receiving the vaccine is safer than contracting COVID-19.

Braylock: The way to know that the vaccines are safe for you and your children is by looking at the work and the advice from the best scientific minds in the world and the statistics and the profile of the vaccines. The best and most knowledgeable group of scientists, researchers and medical professionals are right here in the USA. That’s why the world looks to us for medicinal leadership. The FDA ensures that any drug brought to market must be safe and effective. These vaccines and their scientific processes (mRNA) have been through many years of rigorous testing and studying. Hundreds of millions of doses have been given of these drugs and the adverse effects have been absolutely minimum. However, the effectiveness of these vaccines has been astounding. The Delta variant is the most infectious and aggressively harmful COVID-19 variant seen to date. It is attacking and harming the unvaccinated population, with a few exceptions. Is it safe for you and your children? The answer is yes. But my question to you is: Do you think it is safe for you and your children to be in an unsafe Delta environment without proper protection of a vaccine, and knowing that if you are not vaccinated, you are now in the direct path of the storm ... the Delta variant?

Some national politicians and media personalities have claimed that a drug called Ivermectin could prevent or treat COVID-19, and that it is not being studied or offered due to politics.

The CDC has issued an official health advisory, cautioning, “Ivermectin is not authorized or approved by the FDA for prevention or treatment of COVID-19,” and stating that the National Institutes of Health have found insufficient data to recommend it for use against the disease. In a joint statement this week, the American Medical Association, American Pharmacists Association, and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists said they “strongly oppose the ordering, prescribing, or dispensing of Ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial.”

Anim: Ivermectin has not been shown to be of any benefit in the treatment of COVID-19. In fact, it has been found to be harmful and worsen the outcome of the infection, including death. There are numerous evidence-based clinical trials that have proved it should not be used for the treatment of COVID-19 and the CDC and FDA have strongly advised against it.

Braylock: The primary use for Ivermectin, according to the FDA, is for the prevention of heartworms in small animals, and the prevention and treatment of other parasites (worms) in large animals, such as horses and cows. However, there is a tablet form of the drug approved by the FDA for human use for intestinal worms and also a topical form (prescription only) that is approved for external parasites such as headlice and a few skin conditions such as rosacea. With that being said, never should humans use drugs intended for animals. Using drugs intended for animals can be harmful to the health of humans and in some cases lethal. Manufacturer or prescriber’s directions should always be followed and obtaining your drugs should always be by way of a legitimate source such as a health care provider. Ivermectin has not been proven to be safe, nor effective, against COVID-19 . It cannot treat nor can it prevent COVID-19. Again, this drug can hurt you!

Weinstein: There are potential harms that can occur from the use of any medications, so standard practice is to only use treatments that are proven to be effective. While there is some evidence that, in the test tube, ivermectin can inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we cannot achieve that same high level of the drug in humans. Neither of the two U.S. treatment guidelines recommend using ivermectin outside of a clinical trial. They both have independently reviewed all of the studies, and determined that they were not properly performed and are too small to allow any definitive conclusions.

Colón: There is no such thing as a “safe dose of ivermectin for COVID-19,” as this is in fact not an effectively identified treatment. Medication doses studied for diseases are established to determine the best balance between risk and benefit. In the case of ivermectin, this has not been proven to be effective and no “standard or effective dose” has therefore been established. It should not be used in the management of COVID-19 patients unless it is as part of a research study.

Frenck: It depends on your definition of “protects.” My goal is to keep people out of the hospital. The vaccines approved by EUA all are still over 90% for keeping you out of the hospital if you get infected. That still is a tremendous protective effect.

Anim: For now we don’t have information on exactly how long the vaccine offers protection. What has become increasingly clear is that the protection wanes over time which is why a booster is now being recommended to bolster the antibody levels. I suspect that there is a variation of how long it lasts from person to person. The CDC has settled on 8 months on average and like most things this won’t be exact for every individual. There may be more data which will change this recommendation. I am glad that experts continue to respond to new data and adjust recommendations accordingly, unfortunately COVID-19 virus is not static virus, its keeps changing and so should our response.

Frenck: Natural infection does not give you as good of immunity as compared to vaccine. One study published in MMWR evaluated people who had COVID and then did, or did not, subsequently get vaccinated. It was found that, as compared to the vaccinated,, the unvaccinated were 2.5 times more likely to get COVID again.

Anim: It has been shown that the natural antibodies in people who get the COVID-19 infection build drops over time, in most the antibodies have either disappeared or no longer protective after 90 days. It is recommended that one can get the vaccine 30 days after infection has cleared unless they received a monoclonal antibodies infusion to treat the infection in which case they scan be vaccinated after 90 days

Weinstein: While there are a small number of deaths among those who are vaccinated (mostly in the elderly), the large majority of deaths are occurring among people who are not vaccinated. This includes young people and pregnant women. Obesity seems to be a major risk factor for death in those younger than 60 years of age. Another reason to be vaccinated is the fact that a large percentage of people who get COVID-19 develop long haul symptoms that can affect them for many months.

Colón: Yes, if you have not received the vaccine, you should absolutely receive it! While it is true that some vaccinated individuals have still become infected with COVID-19 and not survived, this is extremely rare. The vaccine significantly reduces the chances that someone will die from COVID. In Ohio, more than nine out of 10 people who have died from COVID-19 were unvaccinated. These vaccines lower the risk of hospitalization and death — very similar to the flu vaccine.

Patterson: The simple fact is that vaccination makes hospitalization and death from COVID-19 far, far, far less likely and breakthrough infections are uncommon. A study in Texas found that only 6.5% of the infections occurring now are in people who are fully vaccinated. Of the 27,701 COVID-19 hospitalizations that have occurred in Ohio since Jan. 1, 2021, as of Sept. 29, only 1,014 have occurred in fully vaccinated individuals. Of the 8,178 COVID-19 deaths in Ohio during the same time period, 8,032 of those who died were not vaccinated.

Another consideration is that if you are vaccinated and are one of the few to have a breakthrough infection, you are not contagious nearly as long. A vaccinated person only has high levels of virus for three-four, compared to an unvaccinated person who has levels high enough to infect others for up to 10 days, making a vaccinated person less likely to share the infection with people around them. If you are vaccinated and have a breakthrough infection, you will be a risk to fewer co-workers, family members and those you love.

Pook: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends that all eligible persons greater than age 12 years, including pregnant and lactating individuals, receive a COVID-19 vaccine or vaccine series.

Colón: Yes it is! There have been no problems for babies whose mothers have received the vaccine while pregnant. In fact, some of the protective antibodies can be passed on to the baby, allowing the newborns to be protected against COVID-19 without being vaccinated directly.

Weinstein: To date there is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have a detrimental effect on either female or male fertility. Some myths have been circulating around this issue, but they are not true.

Colón: This is an absolute myth that has been disproven. There is no demonstrated impact on a man or woman’s ability to have children from the COVID-19 vaccine. However, COVID-19 infection can and does increase the risk of pregnancy complications, including miscarriage and preeclampsia. Being vaccinated against this virus can in fact help reduce the risk of pregnancy complications from COVID-19.

Weinstein: Experience and data so far show that side effects of a third dose or booster are similar to those that occur with the second dose. The most common side effects are fatigue, muscle aches and arm pain. Like with the first two doses, these side effects are short-lived and only last about 24 hours.

Patterson: Everybody can respond to vaccines differently but side effects after the third dose have not been shown to be more significant. Self reported side effects from over 12,000 people in the United States with immunocompromised conditions who recently had a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine revealed that local reactions (itching, pain or redness) were similar to those who reported these side effects after the second dose. Symptoms such as fatigue, muscle aches or headaches, typically the next day, occurred in about 74% of those who responded to the survey compared to 76% after their second dose. New data released Sept. 30 revealed that among the 3.2 million people who received a third COVID vaccine in Israel, they reported mild local and even systemic side effects significantly less frequently than with previous vaccine doses and only 19 people reported more severe side effects that are still being investigated by medical experts.

Weinstein: It is fine to take Tylenol or a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen (Advil or Motrin) after receiving the vaccine. This should not affect the effectiveness of the shot. It is not recommended to take any of these medications before receiving the vaccine.

Patterson: Some studies, mostly done in children, have shown a slightly blunted immune response when children were pretreated with over the counter oral pain medications for routinely administered vaccines. Similar studies in animal models have shown the same thing. However, it was not felt that the blunted response was enough to keep the vaccination from being effective at providing good protection. In all of these studies medication was given prophylactically, before the vaccine was given. No studies have shown similar blunting of the immune response when medications are used to treat side effects after the vaccine. So the take away message is that it is OK to treat side effects with OTC acetaminophen, ibuprofen or naproxen and not worry that you are decreasing the effectiveness of vaccination.

Over time, coronavirus vaccines’ ability to prevent transmission has fallen, explained Zachary Jenkins, a clinical pharmacist with Premier Health and a professor of pharmacy practice at Cedarville University. But their ability to prevent severe illness and death has remained strong, he said. In 2021, unvaccinated Ohioans have made up 98% of statewide COVID-19 deaths, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

“So probably the most benefit you’ll see from boosters initially is the decrease in overall rates of infection, and there will probably be a decrease in transmission,” Jenkins said. “So that’s, I think, kind of the initial target that they’re shooting for. And there’s a big debate we’re having in public policy and health care if that’s the goal we should shoot for, or it should be just shooting for preventing severe disease and infection.”

While a common question, this is a special case that’s not addressed in any public health recommendations, Colón said.

“What we do know is people who are in that category of having been previously infected then vaccinated appear to have a higher degree of immunity of protection,” he said. “There is not a carve out for people that have been previously infected to say you should or shouldn’t. So in the absence of that, it would still be something that would be recommended for people who have had breakthrough infection after completing the series that they go ahead and get a booster. The importance of that may not be as great as for other people."

Jenkins said this is where medical nuance and public policy butt heads.

“If somebody has been actually infected, the data would suggest that probably one shot or two shots is enough,” he said. “Honestly, I am of the opinion that a single shot in someone that’s been naturally infected, especially if it’s been recent, that’s probably all that they need.”

Colón said it’s too early to predict how often we may need boosters.

“I would love to say no, and that we’re going to be done with COVID, but we just don’t know,” he said. “We don’t know if this is going to be an ongoing requirement and if it is, for how long? Or if this will just become an endemic type of virus that doesn’t require any additional immunization.”

Colón: While it is true that vaccines do reduce the chance of picking up or being severely ill from COVID-19, it is not a 100% protection. People who are vaccinated, especially older individuals or those with pre-existing medical conditions, may still become sick enough to be hospitalized, although at a lower rate than unvaccinated individuals. Additionally, it is possible for a vaccinated individual who becomes infected to pass the infection to others. For these reasons, particularly while the amount of infected people in the community remans high, it is recommended everyone wear a mask while indoors around others.

Pook: Those who have chosen not to be vaccinated have made a mistake. They are the ones who need to wear a mask, not me. As the pandemic continues, there is potential for viral mutation and immune escape with resistance to vaccination and monoclonal antibody treatment. For example, there was transmission of COVID-19 in Italy amongst a close cohort of individuals, all vaccinated, and with different vaccines. To end the pandemic, we need to use all the tools available. A reasonable compromise may be to wear a mask at times in congested indoor public spaces.

Klatte: Wearing a face mask can sometimes cause a feeling of claustrophobia. However, numerous medical studies have shown that wearing a mask doesn’t decrease a person’s oxygen levels. Mask wearing also doesn’t increase carbon dioxide levels in the air being breathed in by the person wearing the mask. Carbon dioxide molecules are much smaller than infected droplets from someone with the COVID virus, and because of this those carbon dioxide molecules pass easily through most cloth masks. Children with asthma can and should wear face masks, as there is no medical evidence to suggest that wearing a face mask could worsen a child’s asthma.

Certain select groups of children should not wear masks. These groups include children under the age of 2 years and children who are unable to remove their masks without assistance.

Patterson: Professionals in health care, cabinet making and landscaping have worn masks for prolonged periods of time for decades, long before the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2019. People with immunocompromising conditions have effectively guarded against the germs of others by wearing masks in public places before mask wearing became a political hot potato. Have we ever wondered if the surgeon, nurse or anesthesiologist in the operating room for hours performing our mother’s cardiac bypass or removing our child’s cancer couldn’t breathe? I’ve seen children surviving with cancer and cystic fibrosis, a lung disease far more severe than asthma, laughingly play with masks properly worn over their nose and mouth, without suffering the effects of elevated carbon monoxide levels but able to enjoy the precious blessings of life interacting with friends and family while protecting themselves and others. Multiple scientific studies and experience has confirmed that wearing masks properly prevents the transmission of several diseases, allows us to effectively get oxygen into our bodies and carbon dioxide out, and more importantly, helps us stay as healthy as we can in our schools and throughout our communities.

In the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine trial of over 2,500 children ages 5 to 11, no serious side effects were detected. Some kids experienced fatigue (39%), headaches (28%) and muscle pain (12%), but those mostly resolved within one to two days.

There were no cases of MIS-C or myocarditis (heart inflammation), allergic reactions or deaths in the trial.

Scientists expect there will be some cases of vaccine-induced MIS-C in the wider population, but they expect it will be rare and mild.

In addition to the trial, over 400 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been administered nationally and 7 billion doses have been given out worldwide. There have been few reports of serious side effects and no deaths linked to the Pfizer vaccines.

“If we haven’t seen anything with the hundreds of millions of doses, we’re not going to see anything — so I think parents should feel comfortable that this vaccine has been given to hundreds of millions of people, and that it continues to show a very good safety profile,” said Dr. Robert Frenck, the director of vaccine research at Cincinnati Children’s. He oversees the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine trials in kids there.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a condition involving inflammation around the heart (myocarditis or pericarditis), lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or gastrointestinal organs. It is sometimes caused by coronavirus, and less often caused by the coronavirus vaccine.

“What’s important to remember is that you are more likely to have a severe case of myocarditis if you contract COVID than the kind that you would get from the vaccine — (from the vaccine), it tends to be mild, self-limited and goes away in a few weeks,” Mezoff said.

There have been 877 reported cases of vaccine-induced MIS-C in Americans ages 12 to 29, or less than 0.0009% of those in the age group who received a coronavirus vaccine. No vaccine-induced MIS-C cases have resulted in death.

“So it’s about twice the chance of getting hit by lightning,” Frenck said. “So pretty rare.”

Kids usually bounce back quickly from vaccine-induced MIS-C. One preprint study found adolescents fully recovered from symptoms within 35 days.

Meanwhile, MIS-C occurs about seven times more often in kids who contract COVID-19 compared with kids who get it from the vaccine, and infection-induced MIS-C is more severe. More than 5,000 children have developed MIS-C from catching COVID-19 and over 46 kids have died from it.

Incidences of MIS-C have been estimated as one case for every 3,200 COVID-19 infections in the 5-to-11 age group.

Klatte: In one recent study of people under age 20 diagnosed with COVID-19, the adjusted rate of myocarditis/pericarditis per 1 million cases of COVID-19 infection was 328 (or 0.03% [328 divided by 1 million]). While 0.03% might not seem like much, keep in mind that it’s still 20 times greater than the 0.0015% risk associated with myocarditis/pericarditis following vaccination.

Patterson: It is estimated that myocarditis/pericarditis occurs 876 times in a million cases of COVID-19 infections among males 12-17 years old and 213 times in a million COVID-19 infections in females that age. So it appears that myocarditis/pericarditis is far more likely after infection from COVID-19 than after vaccination to prevent COVID-19.

“I will tell you that I believe it’s a good idea and an important thing to do, and I would put reasons why into three broad categories,” Mezoff said. “The first and most important is protecting your child. It is always important to prevent a disease that can be prevented.”

Experts estimated based on recent pandemic trends that for every 1 million COVID-19 vaccines given to children ages 5 to 11, it could prevent over 58,000 cases, 226 hospitalizations, 132 MIS-C cases and 72 ICU admissions.

Mezoff also encouraged parents to consider vaccinating their child to protect their family and their community, and to help get kids’ lives back to normal.

“Remember that by limiting the amount of COVID in children, we limit the amount that gets to siblings who may have chronic illnesses, grandparents, cancer survivors, even teachers they may come in contact with, so it does protect your family and extended family and again, extending that further, the community as your extended family,” he said. “It not only helps get us back to normal quicker, but the better we do in vaccinating, the less likely we will develop more variants down the road.”

Pediatricians and health experts nationwide agree that the benefits of the coronavirus vaccine for children outweigh the risks. That’s why the FDA and the CDC advisory panels voted unanimously to authorize the vaccine for children.

“Coronavirus deaths and severe outcomes may not be as frequent as it is in adults,” Patterson said. “But isn’t it important to take care of our children as best we can?”

Mezoff: At least with the adult data — and there’s not as much data in children — you are at least five times more likely to contract COVID-19 again if you have been previously infected then you are if you are vaccinated. So the answer is there is some immunity, but it’s been shown at least pretty clearly in the adult literature, that the protection from vaccination is far superior.

Lambes: In very severe cases, if you ended up in the ICU, your antibodies may stay at a fair level for three to four months, perhaps slightly longer. In much milder cases, they’re seeing it drop off very quickly, sometimes within a couple of months. Now, I don’t consider that to be safe. There have been plenty of cases where people have gotten it again within a month, within two months, within three months.

Patterson: An extension that I hear to that question is if my child has already had COVID, especially if the infection was an asymptomatic case, is it going to hurt them to get the vaccine? And the answer to that is no. It actually would probably help them. We know that people who have had the infection and get the vaccine have significant boost to their levels of antibodies.

Mezoff: In fact, those are the people who most need to get the vaccine. So there are very few reasons not to be vaccinated. They primarily revolve around any allergies to specific ingredients. But when you list the conditions that may make you more likely to get severely affected by COVID, asthma is one of the top on the list. So those folks actually would hugely benefit from vaccination as opposed to avoiding vaccinations.

O’Neil: We treat thousands of kids with asthma every year. And with just the regular winter viruses that we have, kids with asthma often get sicker than children with no underlying lung issues. So if they’re getting sicker from normal viruses, the coronavirus is certainly a major impact to their lungs. Of course, they’re going to get sicker and put them in a lot more danger.

The FDA required two months of safety data because vaccines can’t cause problems years later.

Frenck said he has gotten this question a lot, and at first it puzzled him.

“Because it’s not a question I usually hear with vaccines,” he said. “And then I thought about it, and I think this is what is prompting that question: When you take, say you have diabetes, or you have asthma or you have high blood pressure, something like that, a medicine that you’re taking every day, it’s possible that over time that you do get an accumulation of the medication so that you can have side effects that start months or years maybe down the line. But that’s not what we see with a vaccine.”

Frenck explained that vaccines (coronavirus and others) cannot cause side effects years later. Unlike medicines we take daily, vaccines don’t stay in our bodies long. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine for coronavirus, the mRNA it contains is broken down by enzymes within days. Therefore, if somebody is going to have a negative reaction, not just a coronavirus vaccine, it’s going to happen soon after getting the shot.

“If you’re going to have a side effect, it’s going to happen within the first six to eight weeks,” Frenck said. “You don’t get symptoms that start two, six or 12 months down the line. If there’s going to be things with the vaccine, they happen early on.”

That is why experts believe it is safe to give a shot without safety data spanning several years.

Weinstein: COVID-19 has been a burden on our community as well as our hospitals. Across the industry, the cost of care has increased in areas like staffing and often exceeds reimbursements for the care we provide. Simply put: We do not make a profit from caring for those with COVID-19.

Colón: There is zero additional monetary incentive for anyone in health care, hospitals or clinicians, to diagnose patients with COVID-19. The only reason to make this diagnosis is to establish a cause of a patient’s symptoms and help protect others from exposure. In fact, most patients are not diagnosed with COVID-19 in hospitals but rather in other laboratories or testing facilities, many of which are run independently of health care systems. From a financial perspective, COVID-19 has had the opposite effect in most hospitals across the country as it has necessitated additional resources be obtained. Some of these additional expenditures include purchasing much larger quantities of PPE than ever before; many have needed to acquire additional ventilators for management of COVID-19 patients; and others have had to bring on additional staff to help manage the growing numbers of patients that require complex care in the hospital.

Pook: As a healthcare organization, we remain committed to meeting the needs of our community throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The cost of the care we provide — whether we’re treating patients in our hospitals or vaccinating people at our clinics — often exceeds any reimbursement we may receive. To put it simply, we do not profit from providing the COVID-19 vaccine.

Colón: While insurance companies and the government reimburse for vaccine administration, hospitals do not profit off of administering the COVID-19 vaccine. In many cases, the opposite is true. Hospitals may spend more on staffing and setting up the vaccination clinics than what is paid by insurance. The main benefit comes in helping protect patients and staff from illness.

Colón: You absolutely can donate blood after receiving a vaccine without any concern. Receiving a transfusion from someone who is vaccinated will not put that person at any risk from too much of a response. When we donate blood, it is only a small amount of our blood that is given and then received.

Pook: If you received an mRNA vaccine such as Moderna or Pfizer, you may donate immediately after vaccination as long as you are feeling well and the other donor criteria are met. The mRNA from the vaccine will not cause harm to the recipient, even if they just received a booster.