Can you drink alcohol after getting the coronavirus boster shot?
Patients have been asking about whether or not they can consume alcoholic beverages after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine since the onset of the pandemic.
The answer, according to an Illinois doctor with Cook County Health, is yes, but there's a catch.
"It's a great question. The simple, short answer is yes," Dr. Mark Loafman, chair of family and community medicine for Cook County Health, told NBC Chicago in May. "There's no prohibition against drinking alcohol. It wasn't specifically studied and there's an assumption that some, you know, an average number of people in the study did use alcohol during the study, but it wasn't specifically measured."
"Excessive" alcohol consumption, however, can lead to a weakened immune system, Loafman said at the time.
"We know in general that people who have used alcohol, excessive doses of alcohol, have a weakened immune system and that makes them more susceptible to infection and may weaken their response to a vaccine," he said.
So what is considered excessive? According to Loafman, it's more than one drink a day for women and more than two drinks a day for men with "consistent use over time."
"The caveat is that amount or more of alcohol use is known to be harmful for the immune system," the doctor previously said. "It doesn't mean the vaccine wouldn't work, but it may weaken the immune system. So routine drinking that people do and in social situations or what we consider moderate alcohol consumption, there's no reason to alter that behavior simply because of the vaccine."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson COVID boosters are the same dosage as the first round of shots. Moderna, however, is half the dose of the vaccine used in the initial series.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
