Credit – Getty Images
Welcome to COVID Questions, TIME’s Advice Column. We try to make the survival of the pandemic a little easier, with expert answers to your most difficult coronavirus-related dilemmas. Although we are unable to offer medical advice – these questions should give you advice – we hope this section can help you get through this stressful and confusing time. Do you have a question? Write to us at [email protected].
Today, EB in New York asks:
My parents and in-laws will hopefully be vaccinated soon. My husband and toddler and I do not expect to be vaccinated for some time. How should we think about whether it is safe to spend time together in a mixed-vaccinated group? Can they get on a plane and visit with us unmasked and indoors? Or is there enough risk that we have to wait until we are all vaccinated (which can take a very long time, especially for children in the mix)? Or divide the difference and take precaution?
To put it bluntly, we are currently in a strange limbo state. The vaccines we have been eagerly awaiting for almost a year are here, and yet … nothing about our daily lives has really changed. Unfortunately, it’s a little longer.
“The end is in sight,” said Dr. Colleen Kelley, a vaccine researcher and associate professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine in Georgia. “I just do not know it is now.”
Getting your loved ones vaccinated is a step forward, Kelley says. It would definitely be safeis to visit with your parents or in-laws after they have both received the vaccine doses, but the safis the plan is to wait until you and your husband are vaccinated as well, she says.
The two coronavirus vaccines currently authorized in the US – manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – are both extremely effective in preventing people from becoming ill with COVID-19. This is a great benefit in itself, especially for people at high risk for serious diseases, such as elderly adults and people with underlying medical conditions.
But the outstanding question is whether COVID-19 vaccines also prevent people from becoming asymptomatically infected with the virus. Early evidence suggests that both shots provide at least some protection against asymptomatic infection, and many experts are optimistic about their chances of stopping the transmission, but the data are still gathering.
If it turns out that symptomatic infections do not stop completely, even your vaccinated parents may make your family sick if they pick something up while traveling to visit you. Or if you happen to be exposed to the virus, your parents may carry it and pass it on to others. And while the authorized COVID-19 vaccines are very effective, there is always a small chance that they will fail, leaving the danger of your parents.
These are, of course, the worst case scenarios. Given the uncertainty and the extent to which COVID-19 is still spreading in the US, Kelley says you should wait a while longer to visit your parents and in-laws. If this is not possible, you should take the same precautions you have been hearing about for a year: quarantine beforehand and stay outside ideally and masked if possible.
However, here is the good news. Once you and your husband have been fully vaccinated (along with more of the general population), Kelley says you can feel much better about spending time with other vaccinated indoors and unmasked, even if your toddler has not been vaccinated yet.
As you suggest, it may take a while for children under 16 to be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, as pharmaceutical companies have not yet finished testing younger children. But “if the toddler is the only one who is not vaccinated, I would say it’s a pretty safe scenario,” Kelley says.
Fortunately, young children rarely get seriously ill with COVID-19, and once all the adults in the room are fully protected, Kelley says you can feel pretty comfortable with your parents or in-laws coming for a visit.
“We are not going to reach a zero-risk situation,” says Kelley, “but we are going to get to safer and more secure places.”