Do it’s important to put on masks after the Covid vaccine? A brand new NIH-sponsored research hopes to reply that

Nurses remove vaccination doses from a vial while Maryland residents receive their second dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine at the Cameron Grove Community Center in Bowie, Maryland on March 25, 2021.

Win McNamee | Getty Images

A new study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, aims to help doctors and officials figure out what people can and cannot do after vaccinating against the coronavirus, including whether they are still wearing masks and social Need to practice distancing.

The study, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the NIH, will test the ability of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine to prevent infection of the coronavirus, limit the amount of virus in the nose, and reduce transmission from vaccinated people to close contacts.

“We hope that in the next five months we will be able to answer the very important question of whether people who have been vaccinated will become infected asymptomatically and whether they will then pass the infection on to others,” said White House chief medical officer Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a press conference on Friday.

The randomized, controlled trial will follow 12,000 college students aged 18 to 26 at more than 20 US universities over a period of five months. Preliminary study locations were opened on Thursday.

Study participants are randomly divided into two groups. Six thousand students are immediately vaccinated with Moderna’s two-shot vaccine 28 days apart. Six thousand will be vaccinated four months later as the first control group.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published their first guidelines on March 8 for people fully vaccinated against Covid-19. According to the CDC, fully vaccinated individuals can safely walk indoors with other fully vaccinated individuals and some unvaccinated individuals without wearing masks or social distancing.