What to Expect After Your COVID-19 Vaccine

Getting vaccinated is one way to help protect yourself from getting seriously ill with COVID-19. After your vaccine shots, you may experience some side effects. The most common ones are sore arm, muscle aches, headache, feeling tired, chills or fever.

Even if the side effects mentioned above are strong enough to affect your daily activities, they should go away in a few days and are not a sign you have COVID-19. The available vaccines don’t contain live coronavirus and can’t make you sick with COVID-19. The vaccine doesn’t work immediately. If you develop a sore throat, stuffy nose, altered taste or smell, cough, breathing problems, diarrhea or vomiting, these might mean that you have developed a COVID-19 infection before the vaccine started working.

If you think you’re having a severe allergic reaction, call 911 immediately.

When to Call Your Doctor

Call your primary care provider if your symptoms continue to worsen, you’re experiencing new symptoms not listed above, or the area where you got the shot gets increasingly red and tender after 24 hours.

According to the CDC and the U.S. FDA, if you’ve received the Janssen/J&J vaccine watch for possible symptoms of a blood clot with low platelets. Although rare, these symptoms may develop within three weeks of receiving the vaccine and include severe headache or blurred vision, chest pain, abdominal pain, leg swelling, shortness of breath or easy bruising or blood spots under the skin by the injection site. Most people who developed these blood clots and low levels of platelets were women ages 18 through 49 years. If you develop one or more of these symptoms, seek medical care right away, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.

Building Immunity

Side effects are a sign your body is building immunity. For the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines to be most effective, two shots are required. Unless a provider tells you not to, you should get the second shot of mRNA vaccine, even if you have some side effects after the first one. For the viral vector Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine (Johnson & Johnson), only one shot is required.

Remember that it takes time for your body to build protection after vaccination. You’ll have maximum protection from the virus 14 days after you get the single-dose Janssen/J&J vaccine or the second shot of an mRNA vaccine.

Helpful Tips

You can alleviate most side effects through simple measures at home. Acetaminophen can help reduce symptoms like fever and aches. For soreness in your arm, apply a cool, wet washcloth where you got the shot. Using and exercising your arm can also help.

Protecting Yourself and Others

When you’ve been fully vaccinated, consider these guidelines from the CDC. Local county or state guidance, if stricter than guidelines provided by the CDC, will need to be followed.

Vaccinated individuals must cover their faces and physically distance when:

• Going to doctors, hospitals or long-term care facilities like nursing homes.
• Traveling by bus, plane, train or other modes of public transportation and while in transportation hubs like airports and bus stations.
• Visiting prisons, jails or homeless shelters.