| As more Americans become fully vaccinated and pandemic restrictions end, one group of people feels left behind: organ transplant recipients. Emerging research now shows that these patients, who take immune system-suppressing drugs so their bodies don't reject donated organs, are less likely to develop antibodies after the authorized vaccine dosage. That's spurring some of these patients to get third, or even fourth, vaccine doses. They went to pharmacies and clinics to get their shot on their own, without doctor's orders. Some weren't asked questions about their vaccination history, and some explained their situation and still got the shot. Recent studies by Johns Hopkins University researchers found that just 17% of organ recipients showed signs of Covid antibodies after the first dose of an mRNA vaccine, while 54% developed them after a second dose. That compares with 100% among healthy adults in early-stage trials of the vaccines.  Jennifer Woda, a transplant patient, received both the Modern and Pfizer-BioNTech two-dose regimens. Photographer: DaShaunae Marisa/Da'Shaunae Marisa The researchers are now following transplant patients who chose to get a third dose. While the research is being reviewed, the findings are encouraging, said Dorry Segev, one of the researchers and a professor of surgery and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins. Top U.S. health officials aren't recommending that anyone get more than a single vaccine series until more data is gathered, but other countries are further along. A clinical trial studying third doses of the Moderna vaccine for transplant patients has begun in Canada, and French health officials have already recommended that severely immunocompromised people get third doses. Transplant patients are anxiously awaiting more information. While they're used to taking precautions to avoid getting sick, Covid's airborne spread and their inability to tell whether an unmasked person is or isn't vaccinated makes them especially fearful.
"We want to be able to be out in the world and interact with people as we did before—travel, go to work, go to dinner, go to the kids' soccer matches," says Janet Handal, a kidney transplant recipient who got a Johnson & Johnson shot more than two months after receiving Moderna's two-shot regimen. Segev, though, urges caution. "Now is not the time for immunosuppressed people to celebrate the vaccine," he says. "Now is the time to get the vaccine and we will learn over the next few months how much they can celebrate."—Elaine Chen | 
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