What if I catch COVID in between two vaccine doses?

Even as India faces a shortage of vaccines amid rising COVID-19 cases, citizens are making a beeline to register and book slots for their vaccine doses. There are a lot of doubts and questions in their minds about the vaccine shots. Rumours and false information are doing the rounds on Social Media groups fuelling apprehensions.

One of the questions that is doing the rounds is “What if I catch COVID in between two vaccine doses?”

For a majority of people, the disease is likely to be mild or moderate, depending on how many days after vaccination exposure occurred.

If exposure and disease occurs within one to three weeks of receiving the first dose, the vaccine is unlikely to have a major effect and is not expected to modify the course of the infection. However, if a person tests positive after three weeks from their first dose, they are highly likely to only get a mild disease.

Once infected, the body starts producing antibodies, and it is once again effectively akin to getting a vaccine. In principle, follow the protocol, i.e. wait at least four weeks after recovery before you take the second dose.