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Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is urging locals to follow her lead and get vaccinated.
“We can do it again,” Hildago tweeted after receiving her booster shot. “The COVID booster shot is now available to all who got their second shot six months ago. Visit http://readyharris.org and get your coat of armor.”
With COVID booster shots now authorized for anyone over the age of 18, experts are doing all they can to make sure people understand more about how the vaccines work, especially with the start of the holiday season just around the corner.
ABC News reports while the body starts to increase antibodies just a few days after the shot, it takes in the neighborhood of 14 days for peak protection to return.
“There is a meaningful increase in antibody titers by one week and peak responses at two weeks following mRNA boosting,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
With the FDA and CDC both insisting that it’s safe to mix and match booster treatments, to date upwards of 32 million people across the country have already received a booster dose. COVID-19 booster shots are composed of the same formulation as the actual vaccines, though the Moderna booster is given at half the dose.
With studies concluding that the level of immunity gained from the primary vaccine series may decline over time, experts across the board have come out in support of the added shot.
Earlier this month, Harris County officially lowered its COVID-19 threat from a system high red level to a peg lower orange level threat.
"We’ve been seeing a significant drop in new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations,” Hidalgo said in a post to Facebook. “But we’re not out of the woods and the rate of improvement is slowing down. Get vaccinated to avoid a holiday spike.”
Over the summer, as infection rates surged, Hidalgo placed the county under the highest COVID-19 threat, which ABC 13 News added also included advising unvaccinated people to stay home except for essential reasons, such as grocery shopping.