A Dallas nurse is sharing her experience about contracting COVID-19 months after she became fully vaccinated.
Family nurse practitioner Tara Cavazos was fully immunized as a participant in the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial.
Like many frontline healthcare workers, Cavazos said she was eager to join the trial last fall.
"I knew it was something I could do, one, to protect my family and my patients and two, it was something towards helping end the pandemic," Cavazos said.
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In hopes of educating people about the novel vaccine, she shared her journey through the Pfizer clinical trial on her Instagram page.
In late December, Cavazos learned from trial administrators that she had, in fact, received the drug, not the placebo.
One post she hadn't expected to publish documented her positive COVID-19 test results eight months after she received her second dose of the vaccine.
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"I tested at my office over the Fourth of July holiday and tested positive," said Cavazos, who believes she got infected while working at a children's summer camp in Missouri a few days prior.
She said her children, too young for a COVID-19 vaccination, got sick as well.
"The worst symptoms I would say would be the headache and fatigue. I still have a cough," Cavazos said.
Her symptoms stayed mild and now a few weeks into her recovery, she's enrolling in the booster shot phase of the clinical trial.
While researchers hope to find out just how long immunity from the vaccine lasts, Cavazos said the vaccine did its job.
"I am just blessed I got it and I was safe and I was at home and I didn't have to go to the hospital and my kids all did OK too," she said.
Health experts are asking anyone who develops COVID-19 symptoms to get tested, regardless of their vaccination status.
