text: COVID-19 Vaccine: Will It Protect Against New Variants And Do You Need A 2nd Dose? | 88.5 WFDD
  4:26pm Feb 02, 2021
  Southern Californians celebrate at a mass vaccination site in Disneyland's parking lot in January. CDC head Dr. Rochelle Walensky cautions that for strongest immunity, recipients get both doses of the Pfizer or of the Moderna vaccine.
  By definition, that means 94 or 95 out of every 100 people fully vaccinated with both doses of these vaccines can be expected to not get sick with COVID-19 symptoms when they run into the most common version of the virus, but it likely takes both doses to reach that level of effectiveness. In early January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reiterated that changing course and going to a single dose now — i.e. skipping the second dose — would be "premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence." The agency renewed its strong recommendation that the two-dose schedule be followed.
  Early investigations are suggesting the current vaccines, as well as Johnson & Johnson's candidate vaccine (not yet authorized for use), may be slightly less effective against some of the new variants, in terms of preventing all symptoms. But even against the variants, the vaccines do prevent a lot of mild and moderate cases, the data gathered so far suggest, and are very effective, health officials say, against preventing severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
  Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine is a bit of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material hooked onto a harmless virus. It has been tested in the U.S., Brazil and South Africa, and, according to the company's report of its data, seems to be slightly less effective than the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in preventing all symptoms of COVID-19, but is highly effective in preventing death and hospitalization from the illness. "When one looks at potential impact on severe disease, it's 85% percent [effective]," Fauci notes, adding, "There are many people who'd rather have the convenience of a single dose."
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