What Is ‘Vaccine Shedding’? Why There’s Absolutely Zero Chance of Viral Shedding From the COVID-19 Vaccine
Getting the COVID-19 vaccine is often seen as a ticket to freedom. It allows you to skip quarantine requirements when vacationing in certain destinations, eat in a crowded restaurant with less fear about getting sick, and safely hug your elderly relatives.
But things look a lot different at one store in Canada, which has banned vaccinated customers from entering. The reason? People who've received a COVID-19 shot could "shed" the virus to others and cause harm, according to the store's owner. Say what?
Let's get something straight: The COVID-19 vaccines do come with a list of potential side effects, but endangerment to those around you isn't among the risks. Despite the facts about these new shots, misconceptions that they cause "vaccine shedding" continue to circulate on social media, stoking fear and fueling vaccine hesitancy.
Here's what to know about vaccine shedding, and why it's not something you need to worry about when it comes to the COVID-19 shots.
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What is 'vaccine shedding'?
Like many myths, the belief that interacting with someone who got a vaccine could potentially cause you harm stems from kernel of truth. It's a concept called viral shedding (or sometimes "vaccine shedding"), a process of the body releasing viral particles from a vaccine and hypothetically creating a risk of infection to others.
"It is possible to have viral shedding after a vaccine, but what that requires is a weakened virus to be used as the basis for the vaccines. That's not the basis or science behind any of the vaccines we're currently using for COVID-19," Vincent Venditto, PhD, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, who has worked on vaccine development, tells Health.
The only way for this to potentially happen is from a live-attenuated vaccine, which means it contains a weakened version of a germ that causes a disease. These vaccines work by letting the virus replicate inside a person's body enough times to stimulate an immune response, but not cause the disease itself, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The live-attenuated vaccines currently used in the US include:
Typhoid
And while this type of vaccine can cause a person to shed the weakened virus (often through their feces), it's extremely rare to spread enough of the germ to infect someone else with the disease.
Take the flu vaccines, for example. While researchers have discovered cases in which the weakened flu virus was transmitted from a vaccinated person to someone else, they've found no instances of that causing serious illness. Likewise, there have only been about a dozen cases of healthy vaccinated people (all of whom developed a rash after their vaccine) spreading the weakened virus used in the chickenpox shot to unvaccinated people around the world since 1995, per the CDC.
"There are other vaccines that have been investigated that could lead to this. For example, there was a polio vaccine that had a few cases of reported viral shedding, but it's not used in the US anymore," explains Venditto.
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Can COVID-19 vaccines cause shedding?
While there is an extremely low risk of viral shedding from some vaccines causing harm to others, there's absolutely no danger when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines. That because none of the COVID-19 vaccines used anywhere in the world contain the live virus.
In terms of the COVID-19 vaccines currently used in the US, you've only got two types to consider. The first is messenger RNA (mRNA)-based vaccines, the type used by Pfizer and Moderna. The mRNA teaches our immune cells to create the "spike protein" found on the surface of the coronavirus.
"Your body recognizes that protein as an enemy, then your body makes antibodies for that protein," Aaron E. Glatt, MD, chair of medicine at Mount Sinai South Nassau and spokesperson for the Infectious Disease Society of America, tells Health. "The mRNA vaccines don't give you any virus at all."
The mRNA used in these vaccines don't cause any sort of infection, and even if they could, they don't stick around long enough to pose much of a risk. By their very nature, mRNA molecules are fragile and degrade quickly (that's why super cold temperatures are used to preserve them). According to the American Medical Association, the mRNA vanishes from the body within 24 hours, and the spike protein it helps cells produce clear out within 72 hours.
Then you've got the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. That one is a viral vector vaccine. It works similarly to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in that it uses the body's cells to create that spike protein, which the immune system then learns how to attack. The difference is that the Johnson & Johnson shot delivers the instruction manual through another virus, rather than mRNA. That virus is an adenovirus, not the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and it's been modified not to replicate or cause illness.
So even though vaccine virus shedding is a potential (yet extremely rare) risk when it comes to live attenuated vaccines, it doesn't apply to these vaccines, since they don't contain the virus that causes COVID-19.
"In medicine, we don't say 'zero' too often, but there is zero chance for the COVID-19 vaccines to cause you to shed the virus," says Dr. Glatt.
(https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/what-is-vaccine-shedding-covid)
~According to WebMD, "viral shedding occurs when a virus replicates inside your body and is released into the environment. At that point, it may be contagious. For the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, it's not known exactly when this occurs after someone is infected."
We asked Interior Health's chief medical health officer, Dr. Albert de Villiers if the salon's policy was necessary, or if it's possible to shed the virus because of the vaccine.
"There are some vaccines that are live vaccines, where you can actually after you get the vaccine, you can shed the virus because it's an actual live vaccine. With the COVID-19 vaccine and the flu shot — no."
Dr. de Villiers says the COVID-19 vaccine contains pieces of the RNA (Ribonucleic acid) of the virus, rather than the whole thing.
"To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies," says the U.S. CDC.
(https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/326257/No-risk-of-viral-shedding-after-COVID-19-vaccine-IH)
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