JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — You may be wondering what it means for the risk of your household to develop serious coronavirus symptoms if not everybody in your "pod" has been vaccinated.
First Coast News' Vaccine Team spoke to two local doctors who say you still need to be vigilant whether your vaccinated or not.
"Some of the elder population or people who are working in the healthcare industry have had access to this vaccine, but other family members have not," Dr. Mohammed Reza said.
Dr. Mohammed Reza is an infectious disease specialist and says the risk of people in your household contracting COVID-19 decreases with each family member who is vaccinated.
"Overall, people who have been vaccinated do have a lower risk of a poor outcome if they do come in contact with this virus," Reza said. "We are still looking at the data to see if people who have been vaccinated can asymptomatically transmit to other around them in their families."
Dr. Elizabeth Ransom works at Baptist Health and says unvaccinated members of a household still post a risk involving those who have been vaccinated, and unvaccinated family members still have a high chance of developing COVID-19 symptoms.
"We know the vaccine is very effective at preventing disease, but we don't know yet if it means that someone who's vaccinated, if they're exposed to someone, can they start producing virus inside their nose and then subsequently transmit it," Ransom said.
The doctors say you should still take precautions if your whole household has been vaccinated because the shots aren't 100% effective. That includes washing your hand, using hand sanitizer if you can't, wearing a mask, and staying at least six feet away from others.
"Getting vaccinated is the first step for our community and for our country to get back to some sort of normalcy, but that normalcy won't be what we had prior to COVID-19," Reza said.