MACON, Ga. — On Thursday, 13WMAZ interviewed one Houston County woman who was hesitant to get the vaccine, but had a change of heart for the sake of spending time for her young granddaughter and once she started feeling some of the COVID-19 symptoms.
But after the story aired, some viewers had questions and concerns, one of them being, "Should someone get the vaccine after feeling COVID symptoms?"
The sources we looked into include Dr. Jennifer Hoffman from Piedmont Macon Medical Centers and the CDC.
Days after getting her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, Tamara Byram said the symptoms she was having before went away, and she felt it was the vaccine that played a part.
"My symptoms, they've kind of subsided, but my taste has not come back, my smell has not come back yet," said Byram in Thursday's interview.
"The vaccine is not a treatment, it's a prevention. Once you're already sick, it's too late for the vaccine," says Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, internal medicine doctor from Piedmont Macon Medical Centers.
So we asked, "Should you get the COVID-19 vaccine if you're feeling some of the symptoms?"
Dr. Hoffman says no.
"Once you're already infected and symptomatic, getting vaccinated at that moment is not gonna help you and you might spread it to other people at the vaccination site, so, no, we don't recommend doing that," she says.
Hoffman says you should not get the vaccine if you start to feel yourself losing your sense of smell or taste, feel fatigued, or any of the other common COVID symptoms.
She also says it's not possible that the vaccine itself can give someone COVID, but you can get it one of three ways.
"Number one, side effects from vaccination. Number two, infection before you're fully vaccinated because the vaccine hasn't had time to work, and number three, breakthrough infection, which will be much milder than what you would've gotten otherwise, but you still might be a little sick," says Hoffman.
According to the CDC, the answer is also no.
On the Q&A portion of the website, it says people with COVID-19 who have symptoms should wait to be vaccinated until they have recovered from their illness.