Why Are People With Diabetes At High Risk
Sood says people with diabetes are at higher risk for complications because the state of having diabetes is a state of chronic inflammation from elevated blood glucose. Inflammation, as well as high blood glucose levels, are prognostic factors for severe COVID-19 in type 2 diabetes patients, according to Sood.
Type 1 diabetes patients can also experience inflammation, making them susceptible to complications. When blood glucose levels are not controlled through exercise or diet, a person’s condition can be exacerbated. The problem is that often, there is not sufficient high-level management of diabetes,” Camillo Ricordi, MD, director of the Diabetes Research Institute, tells Verywell. “You have to be more careful of your metabolic control more than ever, especially with COVID-19.”
When Will People With Diabetes Get The Vaccine
People with “high-risk” medical conditions, which include diabetes or obesity, are now eligible for vaccination in every state in the US. Previously, only type 2 diabetes and obesity were recommended for prioritization during early phases of vaccination; however, the CDC recently classified type 1 diabetes as a high-risk medical condition. We urge you to get vaccinated as soon as you are eligible. To learn about the CDCs recommended stages of vaccination and where you fall in the vaccine line, read Dr. Francine Kaufmans When Can I Get the COVID Vaccine if I Have Diabetes?
Im Still Not Sure Where Can I Get More Information
Dr. Sanchez says that he understands people’s concerns and urges everyone to make sure they are getting information from credible sources and to question what they read on social media.
There is so much misinformation, and its critically important for people to ask themselves where this information is coming from and is there any way to verify that information, says Sanchez, who notes the importance of speaking with an expert, such as a healthcare worker, whom you trust and who makes you feel comfortable. You can also find answers to common questions on GetVaccineAnswers.org.
If you have been vaccinated, share your story with friends who you think may be fearful, and that may encourage them. If you think someone is particularly hesitant, offer to go with them, says Abbate. People might need special encouragement, so try to understand what their barrier is. Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic.
If I Have Symptoms Of Covid
If you recently tested positive for COVID-19, are currently experiencing symptoms, or were exposed to someone with COVID, please stay away from other people.
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If you test positive for COVID, wait until you’ve recovered .
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If you are experiencing symptoms of COVID, self-isolate and get tested.
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If you were exposed to someone with COVID, quarantine for 14 days and monitor yourself for symptoms. Get a COVID test. If you do not get sick and your test is negative, get vaccinated once your quarantine period is over.
Do Diabetes Medications Affect The Vaccine
At this time there is no information available on drug interactions between the authorized COVID vaccines and other medications this has not yet been studied. However, it is not anticipated that the vaccine itself would interact with insulin or other standard diabetes medications. Note: it may be helpful to avoid injecting insulin or placing a glucose sensor or pump infusion set in your vaccine injection site for several days after vaccination.
Temporary Screening Guidelines For Gestational Diabetes
Diabetes Canada and our health-care provider experts recently updated temporary screening guidelines for gestational diabetes during COVID-19.
You can access more information from the Canadian Journal of Diabetes here:
Watch a short video from Dr. Jennifer Yamamoto Clinical Assistant Professor, Departments of Medicine & Obstetrics and Gynecology. University of Calgary.
What If I Am A Carer
You might well qualify. Check the details here but many carers of people with serious medical conditions or disability will qualify. I have had many people bringing in someone they care for to be vaccinated, not realising they are also able to get the a shot under this phase of the rollout.
However, family members of people with disability who are not carers arent yet eligible. Carers of adults not eligible under Phases 1a or 1b are also not yet able to get the jab.
What Vaccines Are Available
In November 2020, Pfizer and BioNTech announced positive results from the conclusion of their COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, quickly followed by Moderna. In February 2021, Johnson & Johnsons announced the same.
Each has now been approved for use in multiple countries across the globe, with a few other vaccines rolling out on a country by country basis. Worldwide, more than 90 other vaccines are in various stages of clinical trials.
Each vaccine went through the standard three phases of clinical trials Phase 1, where it is administered to a small number of people to show initial safety, Phase 2 to hundreds of people split into groups by things like age, ethnicity, and background to show how different types of people react to the vaccine, then Phase 3, in which it is given to tens of thousands of people, tested against a placebo. Because of the speed needed for development, both vaccines were approved to go through animal clinical trials at the same time as human Phase 1 clinical trials.
The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are mRNA vaccines, a type of immunization that does not use the real virus in the vaccine, but instead employs a piece of genetic material to create antibodies against the novel coronavirus. Each of the mRNA vaccines requires two doses, given three to four weeks apart. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is slightly different, which makes it easier to store and only requires one dose.
What Does Immunocompromised Mean Exactly
You may be wondering what kinds of health conditions or chronic illnesses affect immune systems effectively that you’re officially considered ‘immunocompromised’ by medical experts. Approximately 3% of all adults in the U.S. are considered textbook immunocompromised by , and the key distinction here for these 7 million individuals are chronic conditions or prescribed drugs that continually impact immune systems.
Today, FDA amended the emergency use authorizations for both the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine to allow for the use of an additional dose in certain immunocompromised individuals. https://t.co/MYoTvX82lM
U.S. FDA August 13, 2021
Currently, FDA officials have indicated just a few subsets of the kinds of conditions that would qualify someone for a third booster shot namely, organ transplant recipients and cancer patients, per the Associated Press. But the language in the updated EUA release from FDA officials indicates that those aren’t the only conditions that medical care providers would be able to consider.
According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, there are upwards of 200 specific immune deficiency diseases that indicate someone is immunocompromised. Combined with CDC definitions, these are some of the conditions that are likely able to receive an additional booster shot at this time:
Coronavirus Vaccines And Diabetes
This page is up to date but we will continue updating it regularly as we find out more information about the vaccines.
On this page:
If you are in group six and live in England, you can book an appointment online to receive your coronavirus vaccine or call 119 free of charge, anytime between 7am and 11pm seven days a week.
Most people with diabetes are in priority group six and this group has been invited to have their vaccine. Find out more about getting your vaccine.
If you have diabetes, we strongly encourage you to get the coronavirus vaccine and take whichever vaccine you’re offered. This is because people with diabetes are vulnerable to developing a severe illness if they do get coronavirus, and vaccines are the most effective way to prevent that from happening.
Need advice about the vaccine in another language? Watch videos of healthcare professionals from across the NHS share information in other languages, including Bengali, Cantonese and Urdu.
Why People With Diabetes Are Being Hit So Hard By Covid
More recent data do exist, the advocacy and research organization JDRF argued in a December letter to the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, urging the inclusion of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in the same Phase 1c category for underlying conditions that elevate risk of bad outcomes from Covid-19 infection.
A Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology study published in August and cited by JDRF mined 61 million medical records from the National Health Service in England to conclude that the risk of dying from Covid-19 was almost three times higher for people with type 1 diabetes and almost twice as high for type 2 than for those without diabetes. In Scotland, another Lancet study said being admitted to a critical-care hospital unit or dying was more than twice as likely for type 1 diabetes patients and nearly 1.5 times more likely for type 2 diabetes patients than for people without diabetes.
In December a study conducted by Vanderbilt University and published in Diabetes Care said people with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes who fall ill with Covid-19 have a three to four times higher risk of severe illness and hospitalization compared to people without diabetes.
Convalescent Plasma Now Under Question
Convalescent plasma is blood from people who have recovered from COVID-19 that contains different types of antibodies to fight the virus. In August, the FDA had granted emergency use of the treatment in hospitalized patients, but based on new research, the FDA revised its authorization on February 4, limiting its use specifically to hospitalized patients early in the disease course.
Research published in the British Medical Journal on January 14 found convalescent plasma may cut deaths in patients not on ventilation and an investigation in the journal JCI Insights published in February in February found that convalescent plasma treatment significantly improved clinical outcomes. But a major trial looking at several potential treatments for severely ill COVID-19 patients who are in intensive care announced that it had halted recruitment to its convalescent plasma arm because the treatment showed no benefit to these patients.
The NIH has said that there is insufficient data at this time to recommend either for or against the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19.
What Can Pwds Expect From A Covid
While experiences may vary when it comes to vaccine effects, the Diabetes Online Community is crowd-sourcing to better track what PWDS are experiencing post-vaccination. The non-profit Beta Cell Foundation began collecting data with an online database in early 2021, and theyve reported findings from hundreds of respondents whove gotten one or both vaccine doses:
- Most common side effects for the vaccines include tenderness, swelling, redness at the injection site. Some also reported feeling fatigued. Other side effects include headache, chills, fever, nausea, and muscle ache.
- After receiving the 1st vaccine , approximately 10-15% reported elevated blood sugars for a day or two following the first dose, and 23-29% after the second dose.
- 42% saw elevated sugars for the J&J single-shot vaccine.
- 2 percent reported lower blood sugars, and one person reported both higher and lower blood sugars .
- After receiving the 2nd vaccine, approximately 30 percent reported elevated blood sugars, and less than 1 percent reported lower blood sugars.
- No significant differences were reported based on the type of vaccine received, Moderna vs Pfizer.
Dr. Stephen Ponder, a pediatric endocrinologist at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Texas, is one of those people who believe people with T1D should absolutely be prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Already, I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders following the first dose, he told DiabetesMine in late December.
Who Can Get The Coronavirus Vaccine
Anyone aged 18 or over can get the coronavirus vaccine. Nine priority groups were identified to begin with. Group one got the vaccine first, group two followed and so on. The UK Government have invited people in group six to come forward for their vaccine. This includes people with diabetes, and we strongly advise you to go and get your first dose.
If you are in group six and live in England, you can book an appointment online to receive your vaccine or call 119 free of charge, anytime between 7am and 11pm seven days a week.
There are differences in how England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are rolling out the vaccine. If you feel that you should be invited to get your vaccine but havent yet, speak to your GP and talk it through with them.
Johnson & Johnson Vaccine
The Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine is the newest weapon in the fight against COVID-19 in the United States. On February 27, the FDA issued emergency use authorization for the J&J vaccine for people age 18 and older.
Johnson & Johnson shared phase 3 trial data indicating that its Janssen vaccine had an overall efficacy rate of 72 percent in the United States. The vaccine demonstrated complete protection against COVID-related hospitalization and death and was shown to be 85 percent effective at preventing severe disease.
The J&J vaccine is an adenovirus-vectored vaccine, which the CDC describes as a type that uses a genetically modified version of an adenovirus a category of virus that includes the kind behind the common cold. The altered adenovirus, which can enter human cells but not replicate within them, delivers a gene that tells the cells to make part of a so-called spike protein, similar to the spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus. The immune system reacts by mounting a defense against the protein, creating memory cells and antibodies that remain in the blood stream to protect against future coronavirus infection.
Johnson & Johnson set a goal of supplying 100 million doses to the United States in the first half of 2021.
RELATED: Coronavirus Alert: The Latest News, Data, and Expert Insights on the COVID-19 Pandemic
Does It Matter Which Vaccine You Get
No all three of the vaccines will protect you and those around you. However, there are some differences between the vaccines that may be important to people with diabetes.
Clinical trials found both mRNA vaccines to be extremely effective in adults with almost 95% efficacy overall, only one in 20 people that receives the vaccine would get sick from COVID. Among the trial participants with diabetes, the Pfizer-BioNtech was and the Moderna vaccine was , while the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was . Participants were only followed for a few months, so we dont yet know the long-term effectiveness of these vaccines. As more vaccines are administered there will be more data collected, and hopefully children will be enrolled in clinical trials soon.
What does it mean for these vaccines to be effective? If a vaccine is 50% effective it successfully protects half of the people who receive it from getting infected by COVID-19 if they are exposed. If a vaccine is 75% effective, it protects three out of four people from COVID-19 infection. More importantly, all three vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe COVID-19 infection. All three clinical trials found that in people who did get infected after vaccination, the infection was much milder among people who had received one of the three authorized vaccines, there were almost no deaths or hospitalizations resulting from COVID-19. To learn more about how the three vaccines compare, watch this video.
Should I Worry About The Delta Variant
The Delta variant of COVID-19 is the most contagious version of the virus identified so far. It is spreading quickly around the world and in the United States it has become the main form of COVID-19. Because it spreads more easily than other variants of the virus, people who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 are at an even higher risk of catching it. The best thing you can do to protect yourself and those around you is to get a COVID-19 vaccine and encourage others to as well.
So far, research shows that full COVID vaccination provides protection against the Delta variant. You are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving either two doses of the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Recently, Pfizer-BioNTech announced their plans to seek FDA approval for a third booster shot to combat data demonstrating that vaccine effectiveness decreases by roughly 30% within 6-12 months of full vaccination. However, despite this decrease in effectiveness, current vaccines are still able to protect against severe illness from COVID-19, including the delta variant. These preparations by Pfizer are merely precautionary, with a joint statement from the FDA and CDC assuring that those who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time.
Things People With Heart Conditions Must Know About The Covid
Find answers to your questions about how to get the vaccine and what side effects you might experience.
Everyday Health
COVID-19 vaccination is ramping up across the country and is expected to continue to expand through summer. This influx is making vaccines available to more people with underlying conditions, including heart conditions that put them at a higher risk for complications if they get infected with the novel coronavirus. If you have a high-risk condition, you may have a lot of questions about how, why, and when you should get vaccinated and whether its safe.
Here are some expert takes on what people with a history of heart conditions should know about COVID-19 vaccines.
Are The Two Approved Covid
The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administrations rigorous testing process.
While the development and approval of the COVID-19 vaccines has been faster than usual, this is because of the urgency and scale of the pandemic. No testing phases or safety assessments have been skipped. Approvals have also been prioritised by government regulators around the world.
These vaccines build on years of scientific research which has helped speed up the development process.
Both vaccines are currently approved by the TGA . The clinical safety trials for both vaccines included people with diabetes and both vaccines are currently being delivered to people with diabetes internationally. AstraZeneca is suitable for use in adults over the age of 50, and people living with chronic health conditions, including diabetes. There have been very rare instances of people going on to develop a very rare type of blood clot after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine is the preferred vaccine for people under the age of 50.
Its important to note there is no evidence people living with diabetes were of an elevated risk of developing the rare type of blood clots associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
How Will I Know When Its My Turn To Get The Vaccine
If you have type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or obesity , please get vaccinated as soon as you are eligible where you live. Contact your healthcare office to ask when and how you can get vaccinated. You can also visit vaccinefinder.org to find available appointments in your area.
The distribution of vaccines is the responsibility of each state, and states have different plans for vaccinating people. Most states are using networks within hospitals, healthcare offices, and pharmacies to distribute vaccines to residents. Click here to see the state by state report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, including who is currently eligible for vaccination in your state.
How Does The Covid
There are currently three vaccines that have received emergency use authorization in the US: the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are similar both use messenger RNA to target the spike proteins on COVID-19 virus molecules. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a viral vector vaccine that also targets the spike proteins.
Is It Safe For Patients With Diabetes To Come To Vcu Health For A Routine Appointment Or Treatment What Precautions Are You Taking To Keep Patients Safe
Yes, its very safe. We have increased our cleaning and disinfecting measures to make sure our hospitals and clinics are a safe environment for your care. We screen people entering our facilities for symptoms of COVID-19, and we have fewer people in our waiting rooms. Please visit our COVID-19 news center for more information on the measures were taking to keep our patients, staff and visitors safe.
If Youre Pregnant Or Breastfeeding
Pregnant women should be offered COVID-19 vaccines at the same time as people of the same age or risk group. Your healthcare team should talk you through the risks and benefits of getting the vaccine if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding.
Read the Government’s advice on COVID-19 vaccination: a guide for all women of childbearing age, pregnant or breastfeeding.
Should I Be Concerned Of The Side Effects If I Have Diabetes Will The Vaccine Affect My Blood Sugar Levels
Severe allergic reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine are rare.
Its possible that after the vaccination, ones blood sugar can run high for a couple days as your body thinks that it is dealing with infection So far, people with diabetes seem to be experiencing few side effects.
It is not uncommon for people to feel tired with some pain or swelling in the vaccinated arm and feel a little under the weather for a couple days after vaccination. However, this is a sign that ones body is preparing its immune system for the possible future encounter with the real virus.
Whenever we distribute large amount of medications or vaccines, there will always be someone who has a side effect. For instance, if you read the side effects of Tylenol, it includes liver failure and ASA can also make you bleed out. Are these side effects common? No. One should always weigh the risk and benefits of ones action.
Whats your risk of having significant medical problems or death from covid-19 infection vs. your risk of having significant medical problems or death from the vaccine?
/6are Vaccines Safe And Effective For People With Diabetes
Coronavirus vaccination is said to protect people from severe infections and reduce the risk of hospitalization. People with chronic illnesses, including diabetes, are more at risk of serious complications and therefore, should protect themselves from the virus.
As far as the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines are concerned, breakthrough infections are likely to occur, however, there is no doubt that the COVID vaccines provide an extra layer of protection and do not pose a risk to people’s health.
Diabetic patients are likely to develop certain side-effects like everyone else, which may pose no serious danger. The side-effects from the vaccines fade away in a day or two at the most.
Will People With Diabetes Get First Dibs
Generally, PWDs who arent in healthcare or on the front lines, or arent 65 and older, are most often included in the third Phase 1C group, which has the lowest priority before the general public.
At first, the CDC prioritized type 2 diabetes differently than T1D as far as prioritizing COVID-19 vaccine access.
But on March 29, 2021, the CDC revised that prioritized both T1D and T2D at the same level. Per the CDC, they both can make you more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19.
That change in prioritization supports the cited studies shows specifically that T1D presents a potential three times higher risk for more severe illness,
The CDCs change in view on prioritizing different types follows months of advocacy, especially the 19 diabetes organizations that signed a letter in early 2021 urging the CDC to immediately prioritize T1D alongside T2D.
The impact on the diabetes community of COVID-19 cannot be understated, with about 40 percent of U.S. COVID deaths occurring among people with diabetes thus far, said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association . As the data makes clear, differentiating between T1D and T2D for purposes of assessing COVID risk is an error that could cost even more lives, and we urge CDC to correct this immediately.