The virus can either be fully inactivated or weakened. Knocked-out virus: Uses a non-infectious form of the coronavirus that can no longer cause full-blown disease but can still provoke an immune response. It spurs the production of viral proteins that mimic features of the coronavirus, training the immune system to recognize its presence. Nucleic acid: Relies on injecting snippets of a virus’s genetic material, either DNA or messenger RNA (mRNA), into human cells. ( Find out more about vaccines and how they work.) Finally, cutting-edge vaccines under development rely on deploying pieces of the coronavirus’s genetic material, enabling our cells to temporarily make coronavirus proteins needed to stimulate our immune systems. Some transfer the instructions for coronavirus proteins into an unrelated virus that is unlikely or even incapable of causing disease. Others use only part of the virus-whether a protein or a fragment. To do so, traditional vaccines use the whole coronavirus, but in a killed or weakened state. The COVID-19 candidates, like all vaccines, essentially aim to instruct the immune system to mount a defense, which is sometimes stronger than what would be provided through natural infection and comes with fewer health consequences. Phase three: Expands the pool up to the thousands to make sure the vaccine is safe and effective among a wider array of people, given that immune response can vary by age, ethnicity, or by underlying health conditions. Phase two: Widens the testing pool to include groups of people who may have the disease or be more likely to catch it, to gauge the vaccine’s effectiveness. Phase one: Checks the safety of a vaccine and determines whether it triggers an immune response in a small group of healthy humans. Given the urgent need, some vaccine developers compressed the clinical process for SARS-CoV-2 by running trial phases simultaneously. Vaccines go through a three-stage clinical trial process that’s required before they are sent to regulatory agencies for approval. Here’s everything you need to know-including primers on how vaccines and clinical trials work, the latest news on vaccine distribution and safety, and a detailed breakdown of the early candidates. Before now, the fastest-ever vaccine-for mumps- took four years to develop in the 1960s.įortunately, scientists had started working on the seeds of these vaccines long before COVID-19 emerged–teams were doing breakthrough work on mRNA technology for 12 years before the pandemic, and a global push to make clinical trials for COVID-19 more efficient helped ensure the world had safe, effective drugs in record time.Įven after a vaccine is authorized or fully licensed, it faces potential roadblocks when it comes to scaling up production and distribution, which also includes deciding which populations should get it first-and at what cost. Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency authorization to vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson in less than a year. Though the process can typically take 10 to 15 years, the U.S. COVID-19 vaccines have reached consumers in record time.
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