Hugging Your Grandchildren After Your Covid-19 Vaccine
With vaccinations underway, the CDC has released new guidelines for socializing and returning to normal interactions for those vaccinated. You may be wondering if you are able to hug family members once again, specifically if you have grandchildren. The good news, in short, is that you can. These guidelines apply to those fully vaccinated, meaning two weeks after your second shot if receiving Moderna or Pfizer, or two weeks after your Johnson & Johnson shot.
Here’s what to know about your risk factors regarding Covid-19 following your vaccination:
- Once you are vaccinated, you have virtually no risk of getting a serious case of COVID-19.
- Even if you’re vaccinated, you may infect someone who is unvaccinated.
- If both you and your loved one are vaccinated, your risk of infecting each other is near zero.
On March 8, the Centers for Disease Control released new safety measures that give vaccinated grandparents permission to visit their grandchildren and allow vaccinated groups to gather indoors. Obviously, keep your mask on in public and practice social distancing—we don’t want to get too confident and cause another wave of infections—but with all that said, thank science.
“As more Americans are vaccinated, a growing body of evidence now tells us that there are some activities fully vaccinated people can do,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, acting director of the CDC, said during a White House COVID-19 briefing.
Key points from the CDC’s new guidance for vaccinated people include:
- They can visit with unvaccinated people from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors, without wearing masks or physically distancing.
- They should continue to practice prevention measures such as wearing masks and maintaining physical distance when visiting people who are at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease or who have an unvaccinated household member who is at increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease, as well as with
unvaccinated people from multiple households.
- They should continue to avoid medium-size and large in-person gatherings.
- They should continue to follow CDC advice to delay travel, because “travel increases your chance of spreading and getting COVID-19.”
- They should continue to follow the CDC’s infection-control guidelines, including wearing masks and social distancing, while in public.