She’s out of luck.
A Brooklyn woman who managed to avoid COVID-19 in 2020 got the bug this month – three weeks after she was vaccinated.
Ashley Allen, 31, spoke to The Post on the phone while she was quarantined in her Williamsburg apartment and in between calls from city contacts.
The contact racers “started asking me about what I was doing three weeks ago,” Allen said. “And I said I got vaccinated.”
Allen was thrilled when she was able to book an appointment for the one-time Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the Javits Center on March 10.
The expansive convention room had just received new shipments of vaccines and was firing New Yorkers around the clock – Allen’s appointment was at 2 a.m. Yorkers. Although she developed a brief fever the next day, her side effects from the injection soon disappeared.
Even after Allen was vaccinated, she made sure to always mask herself outside and wash her hands often.
“On Wednesday, March 31, I started to feel a scratch, a kind of tickle in my throat. It was super dry, ”she recalled. “Then I kept getting a dry cough. It kind of felt like I had allergies. “
As her cough continued, a debilitating fatigue set in.
“It started to get really bad, to the point where I went to City MD,” she said. ‘I thought I had Lyme disease. I spend a lot of time in the state. “
But a rapid coronavirus test on April 4 and a second rapid test on April 5 showed COVID. A PCR test, which is more accurate, confirmed this.
The City MD staff member asked “When did you get your vaccine? And I said March 10th, and she was just shocked, ‘Allen said.
Allen’s case is rare, experts say, but not unheard of.
“The vaccine does not necessarily prevent you from getting COVID. It prevents you from being hospitalized or dying from it, ”said Dr. Kris Bungay, a general practitioner in Manhattan, on The Post. “That’s why we all still have to be careful.”
“It was not common in the clinical studies for patients to be symptomatic after being vaccinated.” Bungay added.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the two-dose vaccines of Moderna and Pfizer are 94% and 95% effective in preventing new coronavirus infections, respectively. And while it is more convenient, the Johnson & Johnson one-time vaccine offers only 66% protection.
Sporadic cases of post-vaccination horror stories have surfaced in the local news across the country, but it remains unclear how many people got COVID after receiving the injections, known as “vaccine breakthrough”.
While there are anecdotal reports of New Yorkers who have had a positive COVID test 14 or more days after receiving their last vaccine dose, DOH is further investigating these cases to determine whether they meet the formal CDC definition of breakthrough in vaccines, Jill Montag, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Health, told The Post.
While Allen is recovering, she cannot identify where she was exposed. “Not a clue,” she said. If I had to take a gamble, and still not sure, I think Target. At Atlantic Terminal, in the elevator. “