Skipped your second dose? Doctors urge you to reschedule appointment
Millions of Americans — including tens of thousands of Houstonians — either have delayed or are forgoing their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccination.
As of late last month, roughly 51,000 people who received their first inoculation through the Houston Health Department were “overdue” for their second dose. The department’s number is preliminary but includes any person who has gone at least 42 days since their first round without returning for a second shot.
Statewide, more than 630,000 of the roughly 11 million people who’ve received one dose are more than six weeks overdue, the Texas Department of State Health Services told the Houston Chronicle.
“We need a lot of those folks from February to come back in and get their second dose now,” Dr. David Lakey, a DSHS commissioner who sits on Texas’ COVID-19 Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel, said last week.
Part of the gap, however, is likely due to people who opted to receive their second dose through other health care providers as vaccine availability expanded.
It’s not cause for alarm just yet, said Rice University health
economist Vivian Ho, though she said the trend does not bode well for the overall goal of herd immunity.
The first and second doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are supposed to be administered after a gap of three and four weeks, respectively.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly recommends receiving the second dose as close to the three- and four-week marks as possible. However, doses can still be effective up to six weeks after the initial inoculation, according to the CDC.
Ho said people shouldn’t be dissuaded from rescheduling appointments that they missed, as they’ve been shown to give additional antibodies even if they come late.
“The first dose really does boost your antibodies, but it’s the second that really gives you the second umph,” she said.
Houston Methodist radiologist Dirk Stotsman worried that some people are forgoing their second round of inoculations because the first doses of Moderna and Pfizer have been proven highly efficacious against the virus.
While the first dose offers a good level of protection, he said, the extra antibodies provided by the second dose will be integral to prevent the spread of more infectious and dangerous strains of the virus.
Particularly concerning, he said, is the growing prevalence in Texas of the B.1.1.7 U.K. variant of the coronavirus, which is more contagious and dangerous.
“You’re somewhat protected,” Stotsman said of the first dose. “But you’re not as protected as you want to be particularly with the advent of these firewall variants.”
Nationwide, at least 5 million people have delayed or forgone their second dose, the CDC reported last month. That rate — which accounts for roughly 8 percent of people who received their first dose — is significantly higher today than it was when vaccines first became available.
The rate in Texas, which has routinely ranked among the worst states for vaccinations per capita, is just shy of 6 percent. And the state’s vaccination rate has been plummeting in recent weeks, as has been the case in many other states.
The gap between vaccine supply and demand has been stark enough to prompt some local officials to get creative. Last week, Harris County commissioners approved $250,000 in incentives for those receiving vaccines at local hubs such as NRG Park, where appointments are no longer required.
Many other states have recorded noticeable drops in vaccination rates, and earlier this week President Joe Biden directed doses that go unordered by states amid low demand to be rerouted to other states.
Stotsman said inconsistent messaging from the media and public health officials is in part to blame for some groups’ hesitancy.
Many Americans were already skeptical of the vaccine rollout, he said, and some may have been deterred from getting vaccinated because of federal regulators’ recent recommendation to pause the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“It’s unfortunate,” Stotsman said.
He urged people who are overdue for their second shots to reschedule their appointments, as the second dose is still effective even if it is delayed.