Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19? What Activities Can I Resume?

As a healthcare provider, I am fortunate to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Increasingly, I’ve been noticing that most of my patients in the 65+ age group in my clinical practice have completed 1 or both doses of the vaccines as well. If you’re in this lucky group and have been following the social distancing and masking guidance for the past year, you are likely wondering what your vaccine means for resuming some activities you have avoided for so long!

Well, hot off the press – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on March 8, 2021  released long-awaited detailed guidance for “fully vaccinated” persons. A person is classified as fully vaccinated “≥ 2 weeks after they have received the second dose in a 2-dose series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), or ≥2 weeks after they have received a single-dose vaccine (Johnson and Johnson/Janssen).”

The main change is that fully vaccinated persons may now get together in small gatherings in a private home with other fully vaccinated people without wearing masks or social distancing. In addition, fully vaccinated people can gather with one unvaccinated household without masks or social distancing as long as the unvaccinated household is at low risk of complications from COVID-19.

In real world terms, this means that if you and your spouse are fully vaccinated, not only can you host your fully vaccinated next door neighbors for dinner without extra safety precautions, but you could also visit your healthy but unvaccinated son and daughter-in-law and grandkids at their home without masks or social distancing. This is a BIG DEAL!

We know that social interactions are a key component of brain health, and we have all felt the toll that the pandemic has had on this area of wellbeing. For people with mild cognitive impairment, that toll can be even greater, given that technologies like video calls and texting are sometimes confusing to learn.

In addition to family visits, consider social and brain-building activities you could resume doing in small groups of vaccinated individuals, such as:

• Game night at a private home with another fully vaccinated couple.
• Small group of fully vaccinated people in a monthly card group.
• Rotating host dinner club with one or two other fully vaccinated couples.
• Engaging in shared hobbies with another fully vaccinated person (e.g., quilting, hiking, walking, bird watching).

Share below – what are you most excited about getting back to now that/when you are fully vaccinated?