Important Information about Vaccine Distribution in Rhode Island
The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) is in the process of distributing the COVID-19 vaccine as new doses continue to become available in our state. The vaccine is a core component to reducing the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, as well as protecting our households and families.
These key points have been provided by RIDOH. Additional information:
- Learn more from RIDOH’s COVID-19 Vaccine FAQs
- To see who is currently eligible for vaccine, click here.
- To see Rhode Island’s vaccination timeline, click here.
- To see Rhode Island vaccination data, click here.
Taking the COVID-19 vaccine is one of several things you can do to protect yourself and your household.
- All three available vaccines are safe, highly effective at preventing serious illness; hospitalizations; and death, and reduce the risk of infecting others.
- All three vaccines will help protect you from getting different variants of COVID-19.
If you are eligible to get vaccinated, the best vaccine for you is the one that is available to you first.
- The more people who get vaccinated against COVID-19, with any of the available vaccines, the sooner the pandemic will end.
We have three vaccines that are proven to be very safe and extremely effective at preventing serious illness, hospitalizations, and death.
- This is phenomenal news.
- The vaccines are all well above the effectiveness bar set by the federal government.
- They were tested in large-scale vaccine trials involving a combined total of more than 100,000 people of different ages, genders, races, and ethnicities.
- There were no serious safety concerns.
In addition to ending this pandemic, we want to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death.
- All of the vaccines offer high efficacy (or protection) against these outcomes after people have been fully immunized.
- For example, in the Janssen (or Johnson & Johnson) Phase 3 clinical trial, no COVID-19– associated hospitalizations occurred 28 days or more after vaccination in the vaccine group, while 16 hospitalizations occurred in the group receiving the placebo. No COVID-19- associated deaths occurred among people who received the vaccine. The Janssen vaccine has also shown to be more than 85 percent effective in protecting against severe illness 28 days or more after vaccination.
No steps involving safety were skipped during the COVID-19 vaccine development process.
- COVID-19 vaccines were held to the same rigorous safety standards as other vaccines. Researchers around the globe came together to develop vaccines quickly, because so many lives were at stake. But this speed did not compromise safety or scientific integrity.
- The government began producing doses of certain COVID-19 vaccines already in phase 3 trials, which sped up availability. Scientific advances over the last decade have also helped us learn a lot about the body and how it responds to vaccines.
Vaccines often cause our immune systems to respond in a way that shows the vaccine is working.
- This is healthy, normal, and expected.
- You may experience a sore arm, headache, fever, or body aches, but they should go away within a few days.
- The effects of COVID-19 are much worse than these mild to moderate reactions that people sometimes have to the vaccine.
You should continue to wear a mask and follow other community mitigation protocols even after receiving the vaccine. Because we don’t know for sure whether you can still get infected and spread the virus to others once you’ve gotten any COVID-19 vaccine, you still need to wear a mask, get tested as needed, and keep your distance from people you don’t live with. You should also isolate if you have tested positive or have symptoms.
