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Ayuno intermitente, the importance of vaccinations.

Last Updated August 2023 | This article was created by familydoctor.org editorial staff and reviewed by Deepak S. Patel, MD, FAAFP, FACSM

What are vaccines?

A vaccine (or immunization) is a way to build your body’s natural immunity to a disease before you get sick. This keeps you from getting and spreading the disease.

For some vaccines, a weakened form of the disease germ is injected into your body. This is usually done with a shot in the leg or arm. Your body detects the invading germs (antigens) and produces antibodies to fight them. Those antibodies then stay in your body for a long time. In many cases, they stay for the rest of your life. If you’re ever exposed to the disease again, your body will fight it off without you ever getting the disease.

Some illnesses, like strains of cold viruses, are fairly mild. But some, like COVID-19, smallpox or polio, can cause life-altering changes. They can even result in death. That’s why preventing your body from contracting these illnesses is very important.

How does immunity work?

Your body builds a defense system to fight foreign germs that could make you sick or hurt you. It’s called your immune system. To build up your immune system, your body must be exposed to different germs. When your body is exposed to a germ for the first time, it produces antibodies to fight it. But that takes time, and you usually get sick before the antibodies have built up. But once you have antibodies, they stay in your body. So, the next time you’re exposed to that germ, the antibodies will attack it, and you won’t get sick.

Path to improved health

Everyone needs vaccines. They are recommended for infants, children, teenagers, and adults. There are widely accepted immunization schedules available. They list what vaccines are needed, and at what age they should be given. Most vaccines are given to children. It’s recommended they receive 12 different vaccines by their 6th birthday. Some of these come in a series of shots. Some vaccines are combined so they can be given together with fewer shots.

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) believes that immunization is essential to preventing the spread of contagious diseases. Vaccines are especially important for at-risk populations such as young children and older adults. The AAFP offers vaccination recommendations, immunization schedules , and information on disease-specific vaccines.

Being up to date on vaccines is especially important as children head back to school. During the 2021 school year, state-required vaccines among kindergarteners dropped from 95% to 94%. In the 2021-2022 year it fell again to 93%. Part of this was due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is there anyone who can’t get vaccines?

Some people with certain immune system diseases should not receive some types of vaccines and should speak with their health care providers first. There is also a small number of people who don’t respond to a particular vaccine. Because these people can’t be vaccinated, it’s very important everyone else gets vaccinated. This helps preserve the “herd immunity” for the vast majority of people. This means that if most people are immune to a disease because of vaccinations, it will stop spreading.

Are there side effects to vaccines?

There can be side effects after you or your child get a vaccine. They are usually mild. They include redness or swelling at the injection site. Sometimes children develop a low-grade fever. These symptoms usually go away in a day or two. More serious side effects have been reported but are rare.

Typically, it takes years of development and testing before a vaccine is approved as safe and effective. However, in cases affecting a global, public health crisis or pandemic, it is possible to advance research, development, and production of a vaccine for emergency needs. Scientists and doctors at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study the research before approving a vaccine. They also inspect places where the vaccines are produced to make sure all rules are being followed. After the vaccine is released to the public, the FDA continues to monitor its use. It makes sure there are no safety issues.

The benefits of their use far outweigh any risks of side effects.

What would happen if we stopped vaccinating children and adults?

If we stopped vaccinating, the diseases would start coming back. Aside from smallpox, all other diseases are still active in some part of the world. If we don’t stay vaccinated, the diseases will come back. There would be epidemics, just like there used to be.

This happened in Japan in the 1970s. They had a good vaccination program for pertussis (whooping cough). Around 80% of Japanese children received a vaccination. In 1974, there were 393 cases of whooping cough and no deaths. Then rumors began that the vaccine was unsafe and wasn’t needed. By 1976, the vaccination rate was 10%. In 1979, there was a pertussis epidemic, with more than 13,000 cases and 41 deaths. Soon after, vaccination rates improved, and the number of cases went back down.

Things to consider

There have been many misunderstandings about vaccines. There are myths and misleading statements that spread on the internet and social media about vaccines. Here are answers to 5 of the most common questions/misconceptions about vaccines.

Vaccines do NOT cause autism.

Though multiple studies have been conducted, none have shown a link between autism and vaccines. The initial paper that started the rumor has since been discredited.

Vaccines are NOT too much for an infant’s immune system to handle.

Infants’ immune systems can handle much more than what vaccines give them. They are exposed to hundreds of bacteria and viruses every day. Adding a few more with a vaccine doesn’t add to what their immune systems are capable of handling.

Vaccines do NOT contain toxins that will harm you.

Some vaccines contain trace amounts of substances that could be harmful in a large dose. These include formaldehyde, aluminum, and mercury. But the amount used in the vaccines is so small that the vaccines are completely safe. For example, over the course of all vaccinations by the age of 2, a child will take in 4mg of aluminum. A breast-fed baby will take in 10mg in 6 months. Soy-based formula delivers 120mg in 6 months. In addition, infants have 10 times as much formaldehyde naturally occurring in their bodies than what is contained in a vaccine. And the toxic form of mercury has never been used in vaccines.

Vaccines do NOT cause the diseases they are meant to prevent.

This is a common misconception, especially about the flu vaccine. Many people think they get sick after getting a flu shot. But flu shots contain dead viruses—it’s impossible to get sick from the shot but mild symptoms can occur because the vaccine may trigger an immune response, which is normal. Even with vaccines that use weakened live viruses, you could experience mild symptoms similar to the illness. But you don’t actually have the disease.

We DO still need vaccines in the U.S., even though infection rates are low.

Many diseases are uncommon in the U.S. because of our high vaccination rate. But they haven’t been eliminated from other areas of the world. If a traveler from another country brings a disease to the U.S., anyone who isn’t vaccinated is at risk of getting that disease. The only way to keep infection rates low is to keep vaccinating.

Questions to ask your doctor

Why does my child need to be vaccinated?
What are the possible side effects of the vaccination?
What do I do if my child experiences a side effect from the vaccine?
What happens if my child doesn’t get all doses of the recommended vaccines? Will he or she be able to go to daycare or school?
We missed a vaccination. Can my child still get it late?
Are there new vaccines that aren’t on the immunization schedules for kids?
What should I do if I don’t have health insurance, or my insurance doesn’t cover vaccinations?
What vaccinations do I need as an adult?
Why do some people insist they became sick after getting the flu vaccine?

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Vaccines & Immunizations

Last Updated: August 10, 2023

This article was contributed by familydoctor.org editorial staff.

This information provides a general overview and may not apply to everyone. Talk to your family doctor to find out if this information applies to you and to get more information on this subject.

Most schools and daycares require certain childhood vaccines, but they’re also good for your child’s health.

Certain immunizations are important at every age to reduce illness, hospitalization, or death.

A preventive service might be a test, an immunization or vaccine, or advice from your doctor. These services can…

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Importance Of Vaccination Essay

A vaccination is a treatment that increases immunity to a specific illness. It is a biologically produced item that includes typical components resembling a disease-causing bacteria, generated from weak or dead versions of the microbe. It aids in immune system stimulation, identifies invasive bacteria as foreign invaders, and helps eradicate them so that the immune system can detect and eradicate any microorganism it encounters. Here are a few sample essays on ‘Importance Of Vaccination’.

100 Words Essay On Importance Of Vaccination

Vaccinations are a critical aspect of modern medicine, designed to protect individuals from harmful illnesses. They work by introducing a small, harmless dose of a microbe or its components, such as a protein or toxin, into the body. This exposure triggers the immune system to recognize and respond to the invader, allowing it to quickly identify and eliminate the pathogen if encountered again in the future.

One of the main reasons why vaccination is so important is that it helps to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. By providing immunity to a specific illness, vaccinations can help to reduce the number of people who become sick from that disease. This not only benefits the individuals who are vaccinated, but also those around them, particularly those who are unable to receive the vaccine due to underlying health conditions or other reasons.

Vaccination also plays a crucial role in herd immunity. Herd immunity is achieved when a large percentage of a population is vaccinated, making it difficult for a disease to spread. This protects not only the vaccinated individuals but also those who are unable to be vaccinated, such as newborns and people with certain medical conditions.

In conclusion, vaccinations are a safe and effective way to protect ourselves and our communities from harmful illnesses. They are a crucial tool in the fight against the spread of infectious diseases and help to ensure the health and well-being of all individuals.

200 Words Essay On Importance Of Vaccination

To prevent hazardous infections, vaccination is a simple, secure, reliable method that can be applied before you are exposed to them. As a result, your immune system is boosted, and your body's natural defences to infection are reinforced. Vaccines train your immune system to produce antibodies when exposed to a disease. A vaccine, however, does not cause an illness or increase your risk of contracting it since it only contains dead or weakened versions of bacteria or viruses.

How It Works

Natural defences of your body work together with vaccines to create immunity. Your immune system reacts when you receive a vaccination . It recognizes the bacterium or virus that is causing the invasion. Generated antibodies Proteins called antibodies are naturally created by the immune system to combat disease. In the future, if you are exposed to the pathogen, your immune system can quickly wipe it out before you get sick.

To receive the vaccine, individuals must regularly check with their local and state health departments. When the opportunity presents itself, they must take advantage of it. Some persons with specific immune system problems shouldn't have particular vaccines, and they should first see their doctors. Additionally, a small percentage of people do not react to a certain vaccine. It's crucial that everyone else have vaccinations because these people cannot be immunized. The great majority of people's "herd immunity" is preserved as a result. This implies that a disease will stop spreading if the majority of people are immune to it as a result of vaccination.

500 Words Essay On Importance Of Vaccination

The primary purpose of vaccinations is to protect by identifying and combating diseases like viruses or bacteria. Measles, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, meningitis, influenza, typhoid, and cervical cancer are among the deadly illnesses that can be avoided with vaccination . The substance used for immunization is the vaccine. The vaccine is made from weakened or dead microorganisms and contains components comparable to those found in the microbe that uses one of its toxins or surface proteins to cause the disease. The vaccine aids in boosting the immune system's ability to recognize and eliminate foreign objects. The Smallpox vaccine was the first to be developed.

Secure And Reliable

Vaccines are the best defence against a potentially fatal, preventable, and contagious disease. Although vaccines are among the safest medical medicines on the market, some precautions should be taken. People can make decisions regarding vaccinations with the help of precise information on the benefits and potential adverse effects of vaccines.

Do Vaccines Work?

Most vaccines provide immunity in 90–100% of cases. At the same time, improved sanitation and hygiene can undoubtedly contribute to preventing disease and the microorganisms that cause conditions to remain. As long as bacteria exist, people will continue to get sick.

You can see that once a vaccine is approved, the number of cases of diseases that can be prevented by vaccination begins to decline. Every year, vaccines save millions of lives. The number of people in the same community is protected from diseases when a specific area of a city or town is vaccinated against a contagious disease since the likelihood of an outbreak is reduced. The concept of immunity deals with preventing infectious diseases like rabies, measles, mumps, influenza, and pneumococcal disease.

History Of Vaccination

Before the first vaccines, humans were injected against smallpox in China and other places using cowpox, a practice known as variolation. This practice was copied in the west. The first mention of variolation as a treatment for smallpox dates back to China in the 10th century.

In 1796, a physician named Edward Jenner from Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, tested the theory that someone with cowpox would be resistant to smallpox. To test the idea, he gave cowpox vesicles from a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes to an eight-year-old boy named James Phipps. Two months later, he gave the child a smallpox injection, but smallpox did not manifest. There was a lot of interest in Jenner's 1798 Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine.

He distinguished between "real" and "false" cowpox (which did not give the desired effect). He created an "arm-to-arm" technique to spread the vaccine from a vaccinated person's pustules. Smallpox contamination delayed early attempts at confirmation, but by 1801, his paper had been translated into six other languages, and more than 100,000 people had received vaccinations, despite controversy in the medical field and religious opposition to the use of animal products. The term "vaccination" was created by surgeon Richard Dunning and was first used in his 1800 book ‘Some notes on immunization’.

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Gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Hospital Administrator

The hospital Administrator is in charge of organising and supervising the daily operations of medical services and facilities. This organising includes managing of organisation’s staff and its members in service, budgets, service reports, departmental reporting and taking reminders of patient care and services.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Videographer

Multimedia specialist.

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Linguistic meaning is related to language or Linguistics which is the study of languages. A career as a linguistic meaning, a profession that is based on the scientific study of language, and it's a very broad field with many specialities. Famous linguists work in academia, researching and teaching different areas of language, such as phonetics (sounds), syntax (word order) and semantics (meaning).

Other researchers focus on specialities like computational linguistics, which seeks to better match human and computer language capacities, or applied linguistics, which is concerned with improving language education. Still, others work as language experts for the government, advertising companies, dictionary publishers and various other private enterprises. Some might work from home as freelance linguists. Philologist, phonologist, and dialectician are some of Linguist synonym. Linguists can study French , German , Italian .

Public Relation Executive

Travel journalist.

The career of a travel journalist is full of passion, excitement and responsibility. Journalism as a career could be challenging at times, but if you're someone who has been genuinely enthusiastic about all this, then it is the best decision for you. Travel journalism jobs are all about insightful, artfully written, informative narratives designed to cover the travel industry. Travel Journalist is someone who explores, gathers and presents information as a news article.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

Merchandiser.

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans.

Metallurgical Engineer

A metallurgical engineer is a professional who studies and produces materials that bring power to our world. He or she extracts metals from ores and rocks and transforms them into alloys, high-purity metals and other materials used in developing infrastructure, transportation and healthcare equipment.

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party.

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

ITSM Manager

Information security manager.

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack

Business Intelligence Developer

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What you need to know about covid-19 vaccines, answers to the most common questions about coronavirus vaccines..

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Vaccines save millions of lives each year. The development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are a crucial step in helping us get back to doing more of the things we enjoy with the people we love.

We’ve gathered the latest expert information to answer some of the most common questions about COVID-19 vaccines. Keep checking back as we will update this article as more information becomes available.

What are the benefits of getting vaccinated?

Vaccines save millions of lives each year and a COVID-19 vaccine could save yours. The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, providing strong protection against serious illness and death. WHO reports that unvaccinated people have at least 10 times higher risk of death from COVID-19 than someone who has been vaccinated.

It is important to be vaccinated as soon as it’s your turn, even if you already had COVID-19. Getting vaccinated is a safer way for you to develop immunity from COVID-19 than getting infected.

The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective, but no vaccine provides 100 per cent protection. Some people will still get ill from COVID-19 after vaccination or pass the virus onto someone else.

Therefore, it is important to continue practicing safety precautions to protect yourself and others, including avoiding crowded spaces, physical distancing, hand washing and wearing a mask.

Who should be vaccinated first?

Each country must identify priority populations, which WHO recommends are frontline health workers (to protect health systems) and those at highest risk of death due to COVID-19, such as older adults and people with certain medical conditions. Other essential workers, such as teachers and social workers, should then be prioritized, followed by additional groups as more vaccine doses become available.

The risk of severe illness from COVID-19 is very low amongst healthy children and adolescents, so unless they are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than these priority groups.

Children and adolescents who are at higher risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19, such as those with underlying illnesses, should be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccines.

When shouldn’t you be vaccinated against COVID-19?

If you have any questions about whether you should receive a COVID-19 vaccine, speak to your healthcare provider. At present, people with the following health conditions should not receive a COVID-19 vaccine to avoid any possible adverse effects:

If you have a history of severe allergic reactions to any ingredients of a COVID-19 vaccine.
If you are currently sick or experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 (although you can get vaccinated once you have recovered and your doctor has approved).

Should I get vaccinated if I already had COVID-19?

Yes, you should get vaccinated even if you’ve previously had COVID-19. While people who recover from COVID-19 may develop natural immunity to the virus, it is still not certain how long that immunity lasts or how well it protects you against COVID-19 reinfection. Vaccines offer more reliable protection, especially against severe illness and death. Vaccination policies after COVID-19 infection vary by country. Check with your health care provider on the recommendation where you live.

Which COVID-19 vaccine is best for me?

All WHO-approved vaccines have been shown to be highly effective at protecting you against severe illness and death from COVID-19. The best vaccine to get is the one most readily available to you.

You can find a list of those approved vaccines on WHO’s site . 

Remember, if your vaccination involves two doses, it’s important to receive both to have the maximum protection.

How do COVID-19 vaccines work?

Vaccines work by mimicking an infectious agent – viruses, bacteria or other microorganisms that can cause a disease. This ‘teaches’ our immune system to rapidly and effectively respond against it.

Traditionally, vaccines have done this by introducing a weakened form of an infectious agent that allows our immune system to build a memory of it. This way, our immune system can quickly recognize and fight it before it makes us ill. That’s how some of the COVID-19 vaccines have been designed.

Other COVID-19 vaccines have been developed using new approaches, which are called messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines. Instead of introducing antigens (a substance that causes your immune system to produce antibodies), mRNA vaccines give our body the genetic code it needs to allow our immune system to produce the antigen itself. mRNA vaccine technology has been studied for several decades. They contain no live virus and do not interfere with human DNA.

For more information on how vaccines work, please visit WHO .

Are COVID-19 vaccines safe?

Yes, COVID-19 vaccines have been safely used to vaccinate billions of people. The COVID-19 vaccines were developed as rapidly as possible, but they had to go through rigorous testing in clinical trials to prove that they meet internationally agreed benchmarks for safety and effectiveness. Only if they meet these standards can a vaccine receive validation from WHO and national regulatory agencies.

UNICEF only procures and supplies COVID-19 vaccines that meet WHO’s established safety and efficacy criteria and that have received the required regulatory approval.

How were COVID-19 vaccines developed so quickly?

Scientists were able to develop safe effective vaccines in a relatively short amount of time due to a combination of factors that allowed them to scale up research and production without compromising safety:

Because of the global pandemic, there was a larger sample size to study and tens of thousands of volunteers stepped forward
Advancements in technology (like mRNA vaccines) that were years in the making
Governments and other bodies came together to remove the obstacle of funding research and development
Manufacturing of the vaccines occurred in parallel to the clinical trials to speed up production

Though they were developed quickly, all COVID-19 vaccines approved for use by the WHO are safe and effective.

What are the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines?

Vaccines are designed to give you immunity without the dangers of getting the disease. Not everyone does, but it’s common to experience some mild-to-moderate side effects that go away within a few days on their own.

Some of the mild-to-moderate side effects you may experience after vaccination include:

Arm soreness at the injection site
Muscle or joint aches

You can manage any side effects with rest, staying hydrated and taking medication to manage pain and fever, if needed.

If any symptoms continue for more than a few days then contact your healthcare provider for advice. More serious side effects are extremely rare, but if you experience a more severe reaction, then contact your healthcare provider immediately.

>> Read: What you need to know before, during and after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine

How do I find out more about a particular COVID-19 vaccine?

You can find out more about COVID-19 vaccines on WHO’s website .

Can I stop taking precautions after being vaccinated?

Keep taking precautions to protect yourself, family and friends if there is still COVID-19 in your area, even after getting vaccinated. The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective against serious illness and death, but no vaccine is 100% effective.  

The vaccines offer less protection against infection from the Omicron variant, which is now the dominant variant globally, but remain highly effective in preventing hospitalization, severe disease, and death. In addition to vaccination, it remains important to continue practicing safety precautions to protect yourself and others. These precautions include avoiding crowded spaces, physical distancing, hand washing, and wearing a mask (as per local policies). 

Can I still get COVID-19 after I have been vaccinated? What are ‘breakthrough cases’?

A number of vaccinated people may get infected with COVID-19, which is called a breakthrough infection. In such cases, people are much more likely to only have milder symptoms. Vaccine protection against serious illness and death remains strong.

With more infectious virus variants such as Omicron, there have been more breakthrough infections. That’s why it's recommended to continue taking precautions such as avoiding crowded spaces, wearing a mask and washing your hands regularly, even if you are vaccinated.

And remember, it’s important to receive all of the recommended doses of vaccines to have the maximum protection.

How long does protection from COVID-19 vaccines last?

According to WHO, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines wanes around 4-6 months after the primary series of vaccination has been completed. Taking a booster to strengthen your protection against serious disease is recommended if it is available to you.

Do the COVID-19 vaccines protect against variants?

The WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccines continue to be highly effective at preventing severe illness and death.

However, the vaccines offer less protection against infection from Omicron, which is the dominant variant globally. That's why it's important to get vaccinated and continue measures to reduce the spread of the virus – which helps to reduce the chances for the virus to mutate – including physical distancing, mask wearing, good ventilation, regular handwashing and seeking care early if you have symptoms.

Do I need to get a booster shot?  

Booster doses play an important role in protecting against severe disease, hospitalization and death.

WHO recommends that you take all COVID-19 vaccine doses recommended to you by your health authority as soon as it is your turn, including a booster dose if recommended.

Booster shots should be given first to high priority groups. Data shows that a booster shot plays a significant role in boosting waning immunity and protecting against severe disease from highly transmissible variants like Omicron.

If available, an additional second booster shot is also recommended for some groups of people, 4-6 months after the first booster. That includes older people, those who have weakened immune systems, pregnant women and healthcare workers.

Check with your local health authorities for guidance and the availability of booster shots where you live. 

What do we know about the bivalent COVID-19 booster doses that have been developed to target Omicron?

Bivalent COVID-19 booster shots have now been developed with both the original strain of the coronavirus and a strain of Omicron. These have been designed to better match the Omicron subvariants that have proven to be particularly transmissible. Lab studies have shown that these doses help you to mount a higher antibody response against Omicron. Both Moderna and Pfizer have developed these bivalent vaccines, and some countries have now approved their use.

Check with your local health authorities for information about the availability of these doses and who can get them where you live. And it’s important to note that the original COVID-19 vaccines continue to work very well and provide strong protection against severe illness from Omicron.

Can I receive different types of COVID-19 vaccines?  

Yes, however, policies on mixing vaccines vary by country. Some countries have used different vaccines for the primary vaccine series and the booster. Check with your local health authorities for guidance where you live and speak with your healthcare provider if you have any questions on what is best for you.

I’m pregnant. Can I get vaccinated against COVID-19?

Yes, you can get vaccinated if you are pregnant. COVID-19 during pregnancy puts you at higher risk of becoming severely ill and of giving birth prematurely.

Many people around the world have been vaccinated against COVID-19 while pregnant or breastfeeding. No safety concerns have been identified for them or their babies. Getting vaccinated while pregnant helps to protect your baby. For more information about receiving a COVID-19 vaccination while pregnant, speak to your healthcare provider.

>> Read: Navigating pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic

I’m breastfeeding. Should I get vaccinated against COVID-19?

Yes, if you are breastfeeding you should take the vaccine as soon as it is available to you. It is very safe and there is no risk to the mother or baby. None of the current COVID-19 vaccines have live virus in them, so there is no risk of you transmitting COVID-19 to your baby through your breastmilk from the vaccine. In fact, the antibodies that you have after vaccination may go through the breast milk and help protect your baby. >> Read: Breastfeeding safely during the COVID-19 pandemic

Can COVID-19 vaccines affect fertility?

No, you may have seen false claims on social media, but there is no evidence that any vaccine, including COVID-19 vaccines, can affect fertility in women or men. You should get vaccinated if you are currently trying to become pregnant.

Could a COVID-19 vaccine disrupt my menstrual cycle?

Some people have reported experiencing a disruption to their menstrual cycle after getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Although data is still limited, research is ongoing into the impact of vaccines on menstrual cycles.

Speak to your healthcare provider if you have concerns or questions about your periods.

Should my child or teen get a COVID-19 vaccine?

An increasing number of vaccines have been approved for use in children. They’ve been made available after examining the data on the safety and efficacy of these vaccines, and millions of children have been safely vaccinated around the world. Some COVID-19 vaccines have been approved for children from the age of 6 months old. Check with your local health authorities on what vaccines are authorized and available for children and adolescents where you live.

Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults, so unless they are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers.

Remind your children of the importance of us all taking precautions to protect each other, such as avoiding crowded spaces, physical distancing, hand washing and wearing a mask.

It is critical that children continue to receive the recommended childhood vaccines.

How do I talk to my kids about COVID-19 vaccines?

News about COVID-19 vaccines is flooding our daily lives and it is only natural that curious young minds will have questions – lots of them. Read our explainer article for help explaining what can be a complicated topic in simple and reassuring terms.

It’s important to note that from the millions of children that have so far been vaccinated against COVID-19 globally, we know that side effects are very rare. Just like adults, children and adolescents might experience mild symptoms after receiving a dose, such as a slight fever and body aches. But these symptoms typically last for just a day or two. The authorized vaccines for adolescents and children are very safe.

My friend or family member is against COVID-19 vaccines. How do I talk to them?

The development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines is a huge step forward in our global effort to end the pandemic. This is exciting news, but there are still some people who are skeptical or hesitant about COVID-19 vaccines. Chances are you know a person who falls into this category.

We spoke to Dr. Saad Omer, Director at the Yale Institute for Global Health, to get his tips on how to navigate these challenging conversations. >> Read the interview

How can I protect my family until we are all vaccinated?

Safe and effective vaccines are a game changer, but even once vaccinated we need to continue taking precautions for the time being to protect ourselves and others. Variants like Omicron have proven that although COVID-19 vaccines are very effective at preventing severe disease, they’re not enough to stop the spread of the virus alone. The most important thing you can do is reduce your risk of exposure to the virus. To protect yourself and your loved ones, make sure to:

Wear a mask where physical distancing from others is not possible.
Keep a physical distance from others in public places.
Avoid poorly ventilated or crowded spaces.
Open windows to improve ventilation indoors.
Try and focus on outdoor activities if possible.
Wash your hands regularly with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub.

If you or a family member has a fever, cough or difficulty breathing, seek medical care early and avoid mixing with other children and adults.

Can COVID-19 vaccines affect your DNA?

No, none of the COVID-19 vaccines affect or interact with your DNA in any way. Messenger RNA, or mRNA, vaccines teach the cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response inside the body. This response produces antibodies which keep you protected against the virus. mRNA is different from DNA and only stays inside the cell for about 72 hours before degrading. However, it never enters the nucleus of the cell, where DNA is kept.

Do the COVID-19 vaccines contain any animal products in them?

No, none of the WHO-approved COVID-19 vaccines contain animal products.

I’ve seen inaccurate information online about COVID-19 vaccines. What should I do?

Sadly, there is a lot of inaccurate information online about the COVID-19 virus and vaccines. A lot of what we’re experiencing is new to all of us, so there may be some occasions where information is shared, in a non-malicious way, that turns out to be inaccurate.

Misinformation in a health crisis can spread paranoia, fear and stigmatization. It can also result in people being left unprotected or more vulnerable to the virus. Get verified facts and advice from trusted sources like your local health authority, the UN, UNICEF, WHO.

If you see content online that you believe to be false or misleading, you can help stop it spreading by reporting it to the social media platform.

What is COVAX?

COVAX is a global effort committed to the development, production and equitable distribution of vaccines around the world. No country will be safe from COVID-19 until all countries are protected.

There are 190 countries and territories engaged in the COVAX Facility, which account for over 90 per cent of the world’s population. Working with CEPI, GAVI, WHO and other partners, UNICEF is leading efforts to procure and supply COVID-19 vaccines on behalf of COVAX.

Learn more about COVAX .

This article was last updated on 25 October 2022. It will continue to be updated to reflect the latest information.

How to talk to your children about COVID-19 vaccines

Tips for navigating the conversation

How to talk to friends and family about vaccines

Tips for handling tough conversations with your loved ones

COVAX information centre

UNICEF and partners led the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history

Disclaimer: This translation was last updated on August 2, 2022. For up-to-date content, please visit the English version of this page.

Disclaimer: The Spanish COVID-19 site is currently undergoing significant updates which may lead to a delay in translated content. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Benefits of Getting A COVID-19 Vaccine

There are many benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
Offers added protection: COVID-19 vaccines can offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection.

How to be best protected: As with vaccines for other diseases, people are best protected when they stay up to date .

COVID-19 Vaccines Protect Your Health

COVID 19-vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. Vaccination remains the safest strategy for avoiding hospitalizations, long-term health outcomes, and death.

What You Can Do Now to Prevent Severe Illness, Hospitalization, and Death

Use Vaccines.gov – to find a COVID-19 vaccine near you.

CDC recommends everyone aged 5 years and older get 1 updated COVID-19 vaccine . Children aged 6 months – 4 years may need more than 1 dose of updated COVID-19 to stay up to date . People aged 65 years and older who received 1 dose of any updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) should receive 1 additional dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months after the previous updated dose. For more Novavax information, click or tap here .

Severe Illness

COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing the most severe outcomes from a COVID-19 infection.

Myocarditis is a condition where the heart becomes inflamed in response to an infection or some other trigger. Myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination is rare. This study shows that patients with COVID-19 had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19 .

Hospitalization

COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent you from becoming hospitalized if you do get infected with COVID-19.

COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent you from dying if you do get infected with COVID-19.

COVID-19 Vaccination is a Safer, More Reliable Way to Build Protection

Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccination helps protect people by creating an immune response without the potentially severe illness or post-COVID conditions that can be associated with COVID-19 infection.

Getting sick with COVID-19 can cause severe illness or death, even in children, but it is not possible to determine who will experience mild or severe illness from COVID-19 infection.
People may have long-term health issues after having COVID-19. Even people who do not have symptoms when they are first infected with COVID-19 can experience long-term health problems, also known as long COVID or post-COVID conditions .
Complications can appear after mild or severe COVID-19, or after multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) .

While people can get some protection from having COVID-19, the level and length of that protection varies, especially as COVID-19 variants continue to emerge .

Immunity (protection) from infection can vary depending on how mild or severe someone’s illness was and their age.
Immunity from infection decreases over time.

Importantly, there is no antibody test available that can reliably determine if a person is protected from further infection.

After vaccination, continue to follow all current prevention measures recommended by CDC based on latest COVID-19 hospital admission levels. Learn more about protecting your family from COVID-19.

Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines
Frequently Asked Questions about COVID-19 Vaccination
COVID-19 Vaccines for People Who Would Like to Have a Baby

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Why vaccination is important and the safest way to protect yourself

Vaccines are the most effective way to prevent many infectious diseases. This page explains how vaccines work, what they contain and the most common side effects.

Video: Vaccines – are they safe for my child?

In this video, a GP reassures a parent about vaccinations for her child.

Important: Be aware of anti-vaccine stories

Anti-vaccine stories are often spread online through social media and offline.

Always get your vaccine and health information from trusted sources, such as the NHS or World Health Organisation (WHO).

The vaccine information on social media may not be based on scientific evidence and could put your child at risk of a serious illness.

All the current evidence tells us that getting vaccinated is safer than not getting vaccinated.

Things you need to know about vaccines

Vaccines do help to protect you and your child from many serious and potentially deadly diseases protect other people in your family and community – by helping to stop diseases spreading to people who cannot have vaccines, such as babies too young to be vaccinated and those who are too ill to be vaccinated undergo rigorous safety testing before being introduced – they're also constantly monitored for side effects after being introduced sometimes cause mild side effects that will not last long – you may feel a bit unwell and have a sore arm for 2 or 3 days reduce or even get rid of some diseases – if enough people are vaccinated vaccines do not.

do not overload or weaken the immune system – it's safe to give children and adults several vaccines at a time and this reduces the amount of injections needed

do not contain mercury (thiomersal)

do not contain any ingredients that cause harm – only ingredients essential to making them safer and more effective and only in very small amounts

do not cause autism – studies have found no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism

Why vaccines are important

Vaccination is the most important thing we can do to protect ourselves and our children against ill health. They prevent millions of deaths worldwide every year.

Since vaccines were introduced in the UK, diseases like smallpox, polio and tetanus that used to kill or disable millions of people are either gone or are now very rarely seen.

Other diseases like measles and diphtheria have reduced to a very low number of cases each year since vaccines were introduced. These cases are often related to travel.

However, if people stop having vaccines, it's possible for infectious diseases to quickly spread again.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the biggest threats to global health.

Measles and mumps in England

Measles and mumps are starting to appear again in England, even though the MMR vaccine is the best protection against both diseases.

This is serious as measles can lead to life-threatening complications like meningitis, and mumps can cause hearing loss.

If 95% of children receive the MMR vaccine, this would stop measles spreading completely.

However, measles, mumps and rubella can quickly spread again if fewer than 90% of people are vaccinated.

Everyone should be up to date with their routine vaccinations to give them the best protection.

How vaccines work

Vaccines teach your immune system how to create antibodies that protect you from diseases.

It's much safer for your immune system to learn this through vaccination than by catching the diseases and treating them.

Once your immune system knows how to fight a disease, it can often give you life long protection.

Herd immunity

Having a vaccine also benefits your whole community through "herd immunity".

If enough people are vaccinated, it's harder for the disease to spread to those people who cannot have vaccines. For example, people who are ill or have a weakened immune system.

Read more about herd immunity and who it protects on the Oxford University Vaccine Knowledge Project website

Vaccine safety

All vaccines are thoroughly tested to make sure they will not harm you or your child.

It often takes many years for a vaccine to make it through the trials and tests it needs to pass for approval.

Once a vaccine is being used in the UK it's also monitored for any rare side effects by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) . It is also carefully monitored to make sure it still works.

Anyone can report a suspected side effect of vaccination to the MHRA through the Yellow Card Scheme .

Read about how vaccines are licensed, tested and monitored on the Oxford University Vaccine Knowledge Project website

Who cannot have vaccines

There are very few people who cannot have vaccines.

Generally, vaccines are only not suitable for:

people who've had a serious allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) to a previous dose of the vaccine
people who've had a serious allergic reaction to ingredients in the vaccine

People with weakened immune systems (for example, because of cancer treatment or a health condition) may also not be able to have some vaccines.

If you're not sure if you or your child can be vaccinated, check with a GP, practice nurse, health visitor or pharmacist.

Side effects of vaccination

Most of the side effects of vaccination are mild and do not last long.

The most common side effects of vaccination include:

the area where the needle goes in looking red, swollen and feeling a bit sore for 2 to 3 days
feeling a bit unwell or developing a high temperature for 1 or 2 days
older children and adults may feel faint
feeling tired, having a headache, mild fever, or flu-like symptoms

Some children might also cry and be upset immediately after the injection. This is normal and they should feel better after a cuddle. Common side effects usually pass after a few days.

Allergic reactions

It's rare for anyone to have a serious allergic reaction to a vaccination. If this does happen, it usually happens within minutes.

The person who vaccinates you or your child will be trained to deal with allergic reactions and treat them immediately. With prompt treatment, you or your child will make a good recovery.

Read vaccination tips for parents, including what to expect after vaccination

Non-urgent advice: Speak to your GP or practice nurse if:

you're worried about you or your child having a vaccine
you're not sure if you or your child can have a vaccine

You could also ask a health visitor any questions you have about vaccines.

What's in a vaccine?

Most vaccines contain a small amount of bacteria, virus or toxin that's been weakened or destroyed in a laboratory first.

Some contain chemicals that make your body think it's coming into contact with the bacteria, virus or toxin.

This means there's a very low risk of healthy people catching a disease from a vaccine. It's also why you might see vaccines being called "live" or "non-live".

Other vaccine ingredients

Vaccines contain other ingredients that help make the vaccine more effective.

The main ingredient in vaccines is water. The other ingredients are used in very small amounts.

There is no evidence that any of the ingredients are harmful in such small amounts.

An adjuvant is an ingredient added to vaccines in very small amounts to make them work more effectively. This may be particularly important for certain individuals, such as young babies or older people.

The most common vaccine adjuvants are aluminium salts. These have been used safely in many of our routine infant and adult vaccines for more than 70 years.

We come into contact with aluminium all the time. It's found naturally in very small amounts in:

almost all foods
drinking water
breast milk
baby formula milk

It's also used in medicines, such as antacids, and in food packaging.

There's no evidence that the levels of aluminium we come across every day increase the risk of conditions like dementia or autism.

The amount of aluminium used in non-live vaccines is very, very small. No harmful effects have been seen with vaccines that contain an aluminium-based adjuvant.

What is it?

Aluminium is a very common metal that's been used safely in vaccines for more than 70 years.

Most killed vaccines contain a very small amount of aluminium-based adjuvant to:

help to boost our immune response
make the vaccine more effective and long-lasting
reduce the amount of antigen needed in a vaccine
sometimes reduce the number of doses that need to be given

Adjuvants are added to vaccines in very small amounts to make the response to the vaccine more effective. They have been shown to not be harmful.

They might cause minor reactions, such as a small temporary lump or redness at the injection site.

Squalene oil is a component of the adjuvant added to the trivalent flu vaccine and the Sanofi (VidPrevtyn) COVID-19 vaccine recommended for older adults.

It comes from marine oil and is highly purified before being used in the vaccines.

Adjuvants are added to some vaccines to:

help to boost our immune response, especially as we get older

There have been a small number of allergic reactions to vaccines containing gelatine. Speak to your doctor first if you have a known allergy to gelatine.

Some religious groups, such as Muslims and Jews, may be concerned about using vaccines containing gelatine from pigs. But some faith group leaders have stated the use of gelatine in vaccines is acceptable and does not break any religious rules.

Read this NHS leaflet about vaccines and porcine gelatine

Gelatine derived from pigs is used as a stabilising agent in some vaccines to:

help protect vaccines from the effects of heat or freeze-drying
help maintain the shelf life of the vaccine

The only vaccines containing gelatine in the UK routine vaccination schedule are:

the children's nasal flu vaccine
1 of the 2 types of MMR vaccine
1 of the 2 types of shingles vaccine

These are considered safe. Human serum albumin used in vaccines comes from screened blood donors. The manufacturing process ensures there is no risk of transmitting any diseases.

Recombinant albumin does not contain any human or animal products.

What are they?

Human serum albumin is a substance from human blood. It's used to stabilise a chickenpox vaccine called Varilix and maintain its quality during storage.

Recombinant albumin is produced by cells, such as yeast cells, that have had the gene for human albumin inserted into them.

The cells are then able to generate large quantities of human serum albumin without any need to extract it from human blood.

Recombinant albumin may be used in very small amounts as a stabiliser in 1 of the MMR vaccines used in the UK (MMRVaxPro).

Children and adults with a severe egg allergy can safely receive the MMR vaccine.

Children and adults with an egg allergy are advised to have either:

an egg-free inactivated flu vaccine
a vaccine with a very low egg protein (ovalbumin) content

The live nasal spray flu vaccine given to children has a very low egg protein content. It can be safely given to children with an egg allergy.

Children and adults who have previously had a very severe allergic reaction to eggs may be advised to have their flu vaccine in a hospital.

There are 2 vaccines in the UK routine schedule that contain small amounts of egg protein:

the flu vaccine – which is grown on hens' eggs. It can potentially trigger an allergic reaction in people with an egg allergy
the MMR vaccine – which is grown on cells from chick embryos, which is not the same as hens' eggs. This means it does not trigger an allergic reaction

Formaldehyde can be found naturally in our bloodstream at levels far higher than we would be exposed to in vaccines.

Although formaldehyde can be harmful in high concentrations, there are no health concerns about the small amounts found in vaccines.

Formaldehyde is a chemical also used in the production of killed vaccines. It's used very early in the manufacturing process to kill or inactivate the toxins from bacteria or viruses.

Once the antigens are inactivated, the formaldehyde is diluted out. It's possible that trace amounts may remain in the final vaccine.

If you know you're allergic to neomycin or any other antibiotic, speak to your doctor or practice nurse before having a vaccine.

Antibiotics known to cause allergic reactions, such as penicillin, are generally not used in vaccines.

But tiny amounts of an antibiotic called neomycin, which is capable of triggering an allergic reaction, are found in:

the MMR vaccine
6-in-1 vaccine
quadrivalent inactivated flu vaccine
4-in-1 pre-school booster vaccine Repevax
shingles vaccine

Antibiotics are added to some vaccines to prevent the growth of bacteria during the production and storage of the vaccine.

Antibiotics can only be found in tiny amounts in the final vaccine.

A full list of any vaccine's ingredients is available on the electronic medicines compendium (emc) website

Read more about specific vaccine ingredients on the Oxford University Vaccine Knowledge Project website

Page last reviewed: 28 March 2023 Next review due: 28 March 2026

Vaccines Are Important—But What Are They and How Do They Work?

BY JEREMY LEDGER January 21, 2022

illustration of doctors with a giant vaccine syringe heading toward a coronavirus

[Originally published: Oct. 15, 2020; Updated: Jan. 20, 2022]

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our lives would be an understatement. Over the past two years, many of us have spent much of our time hunkered down in our homes, avoiding crowds, wearing masks, social distancing, and learning and working from home. During the first year of the pandemic these were our only tools for combating the coronavirus .

But scientists were busy developing COVID-19 vaccines at record pace. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was prepared to approve any vaccines that demonstrated at least 50% efficacy against the coronavirus.

So, it was welcome news when the COVID-19 vaccines that were authorized for emergency use by the FDA just over a year ago exceeded all expectations. The three vaccines in use in the U.S. were deemed both safe and highly effective. And over the past year, hundreds of millions of doses have been dispensed to adults, teens, and most recently, children—and that’s just in the U.S.

For many, the vaccine brought with it a crash course on a host of terms many haven’t seen since high school—or ever—including the immune system, antibodies, and asymptomatic infection, to name a few. Cable news and newspapers began to regularly reference vaccine “platforms” such as mRNA vaccine technology and viral vectors. Then there is the ongoing discussion of vaccine protection against infection versus protection against severe disease. All of this may be confusing to those of us who are simply trying to put one foot in front of the other during this pandemic. And any confusion surrounding COVID-19 vaccines may be compounded by the uptick in reporting about them—the trials, their efficacy, and their safety.

With this in mind, Yale Medicine offers this primer on vaccine basics—how they work, their different platforms, and the approval process—and what that means for a COVID-19 vaccine.

So, how do vaccines actually work?

Basically, vaccines train the immune system to recognize dangerous pathogens, like SARS-CoV-2, preparing the body to fight an infection without having to get sick.

“The immune system is like an orchestra. It has so many different players and instruments that need to work together to defend the body against invading pathogens,” says Akiko Iwasaki, PhD , Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale School of Medicine. “The vaccine serves as the conductor to orchestrate the defense system.”

How does this happen? When a pathogen infects the body, the immune system dispatches an army of different cells to clear the infection from the body. Two types of immune cells that make up this army—B cells and T cells—are particularly important for the development of vaccines.

What are B cells and T cells?

B cells and T cells move through the body, constantly on the lookout for pathogens. When they encounter one, they attach themselves to it via a structure on the pathogen’s surface called an antigen. When B cells bind to antigens, they crank out thousands of antibodies, which in turn bind to other pathogens circulating in the blood and lymphatic fluid. These antibodies send chemical signals to other immune cells to come and help destroy the pathogen.

But what happens if a virus makes it past the antibodies and infects the cells? This is where T cells come in: A special type of T cell (called a “killer T cell”) monitors the body’s cells. Should these killer T cells detect an infected cell, they kill it in order to prevent the infection from spreading to other cells.

After ridding the body of a pathogen, some B and T cells live on as memory cells. These memory cells can live for years—even decades—preserving their knowledge of these pathogens and how to defeat them. If the immune system sees them again, the memory cells will recognize them and launch a swift and powerful immune response that kills the pathogens before they can cause sickness.

If you had chickenpox as a child, for example, your immune system will have developed an immunological memory against the virus that caused it. This memory largely protects you from getting chickenpox a second time. Similarly, studies have found that people who’ve recovered from COVID-19 develop memory B and T cells against the coronavirus, meaning they have some level of long-term protection against it. But unlike with chickenpox, scientists don’t yet know how long this immunological memory lasts with COVID-19 or how well it protects against reinfection.

Studies suggest that COVID-19 vaccines also provoke a robust immune response. Researchers have found that vaccines not only stimulate the production of antibodies, but that they should also provide some level of long-term protection against COVID-19, though for how long this protection will last remains unknown.

Because this is complicated, it’s worth reiterating: It is the ability of memory cells to remember pathogens that confers immunity and protection against viral, bacterial, and other pathogens they have previously confronted. Vaccines work because of this immunological memory.

But instead of exposing people to a dangerous pathogen that causes severe disease, a vaccine introduces the immune system to the pathogen in a way that does not make them ill, but which nevertheless prompts the immune cells to respond and create antibodies and memory cells.

In this way, vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 work by introducing your immune system to the virus—or the virus’s antigens—in a manner that does not cause COVID-19, but which still stimulates an immune response and the formation of an immunological memory.

How does a vaccine introduce a pathogen without making you sick?

Scientists have developed several ways to introduce a pathogen to the immune system without risking disease. One method—what’s known as an “inactivated vaccine”—exposes the bacteria or virus to certain chemicals, radiation, or heat to “kill” it, so that it is no longer able to infect human cells; this deactivated pathogen is what’s in the vaccine. Alternatively, scientists might weaken a pathogen so that it is still able to infect cells but without causing sickness; these are known as live or attenuated vaccines.

Both methods have been used safely and effectively for several decades to protect people against a variety of diseases that were once common. Examples include the Salk polio vaccine, as well as vaccines against measles , mumps, and rubella, among others.

Both inactivated and live attenuated vaccines for COVID-19 have been developed. Sinovac Biotech, a company in China, produced an inactivated vaccine that has been approved there and is authorized for use in several other countries. Sinopharm, another Chinese company, also developed an inactivated vaccine, as has Bharat Biotech, a company in India. Codagenix, a company in New York, developed COVI-VAC, a live attenuated vaccine that is still in clinical trials. One downside to inactivated and live attenuated vaccines is that they require considerable quantities of virus to be produced, which is a slow process.

New vaccine methods

Since the start of the pandemic, pharmaceutical companies and research laboratories have explored other ways to develop vaccines against COVID-19, beyond the methods discussed above.

For instance, several groups are working on viral vector vaccines, in which scientists genetically engineer an innocuous, or harmless, virus so that it carries genetic material that codes for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the structure the virus uses to attach to and infect cells and which also serves as an antigen.

The genetically engineered virus acts as a Trojan Horse. When introduced into the body (via an injection, for instance), the virus infects cells, but in so doing, it covertly delivers the genetic material for the spike protein—spurring the body’s own cells to produce copies of it. Recognizing these spike proteins as outside invaders, the immune system mounts a defense against them, and, in the process, creates memory cells that should serve to protect against the coronavirus.

Some viral vector vaccines use viruses that have been modified so that they cannot replicate and consequently cannot cause illness, while others use viruses that cannot harm people. The Johnson & Johnson, University of Oxford-AstraZeneca team, CanSino, and several other companies have developed viral vector vaccines against COVID-19.

Still other companies like Moderna, Pfizer, and Inovio, among others, have developed RNA and DNA vaccines. Like viral vector vaccines, RNA and DNA vaccines induce the body’s cells to generate copies of antigen proteins (usually the spike protein), only they do not use a viral vector to deliver genetic material. Instead, the genetic material, in the form of either DNA or messenger RNA, is introduced into the body directly.

The genetic material enters cells and instructs them to produce copies of the viral antigen. This stimulates an immune response and ultimately development of memory cells that can recognize and respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. DNA and RNA vaccines can be mass produced quickly and at reasonable cost.

How are vaccines approved?

Before a vaccine can be used on the general population, it must first be carefully tested and vetted in an approval process intended to ensure that it is both safe and effective.

Here in the United States, this process begins with what’s called “preclinical research.” This is when the vaccine is first tested on cell cultures and animals—not humans—to determine whether it safely produces the desired immune response.

If a vaccine passes the preclinical stage, it begins a three-phase trial.

Phase 1: During Phase 1, the vaccine is given to a small group of healthy volunteers (between 10 and 100). This phase of the trial is focused on evaluating whether the vaccine is safe, though researchers also study its efficacy by determining whether it triggers an immune response.
Phase 2: Vaccines that prove safe in Phase 1 move on to Phase 2. Here, hundreds of volunteers receive the vaccine. During Phase 2, researchers continue to assess the safety of the vaccine, though they also try to understand how the immune system responds to different doses of it.
Phase 3: Phase 3 occurs after a vaccine successfully passes Phase 2. During this phase, thousands or even tens of thousands of volunteers receive either the vaccine or a placebo, but neither the researchers nor the volunteers know who gets which treatment.

The volunteers then live their lives as they normally would. Amid COVID-19, this means they are encouraged to follow current public health infection prevention guidelines. Researchers will track how many volunteers get COVID-19 and, to measure the effectiveness of the vaccines, follow them to learn whether those who received the vaccine were infected at lower rates than those who got the placebo. Researchers continue to monitor the vaccine’s safety throughout the trial.

If, after all three phases, the vaccine is found to be safe and effective—if, in the example of COVID-19, it protects against infection or reduces severity of illness—then it is submitted to the FDA for approval. A multidisciplinary team of scientists reviews the data collected throughout the trial. And, if the data look good, the FDA will license the vaccine and the manufacturing process begins in order to produce mass quantities, so the general population can be vaccinated.

Is safety monitored after the vaccine is approved?

Even after the approval of a vaccine, the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continue to monitor its safety. Anyone involved in the use or distribution of vaccines including patients, pharmacists, health care providers, and vaccine manufacturers can report side effects through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

In all, this process of vaccine development, from preclinical research to licensure and vaccine production, usually takes a decade or longer. The fastest vaccine ever successfully developed—a mumps vaccine produced by Merck in the 1960s—still required four years. Several vaccines against COVID-19, however, were developed and completed clinical trials in record time—in some cases, in less than a year. But experts like Iwasaki do not see this as cause for alarm. “The vaccine candidates underwent rigorous testing before being authorized by the FDA,” she says. “Even though the timeline was sped up to develop COVID-19 vaccines, the evaluation of safety and efficacy was not compromised.”

Clinical trials found the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines (all currently authorized for use in the U.S.) both safe and effective against COVID-19, although the CDC has expressed a preference for mRNA vaccines. The CDC and health agencies around the world continue to monitor their safety.

View part two of our series on vaccines —a Q & A with a Yale public health expert on the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently in development.

[ Visit the Yale Medicine Vaccine Content Center for more information. ]

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Home / Clinical Resources / Vaccine Confidence & Addressing Concerns / Vaccine Confidence & Addressing Concerns Topic / Importance of Vaccines: Resources & Information

Importance of Vaccines: Resources & Information

For more than 50 years, vaccinations have saved more than a billion lives and prevented countless illnesses and disabilities in the United States. Vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, COVID-19, influenza, and whooping cough, are still a threat. They continue to infect U.S. children, resulting in hospitalizations and deaths.

Immunize.org

Materials for providers.

A list of science-based materials available from respected organizations.

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Vaccines Work!

CDC statistics demonstrate dramatic declines in vaccine-preventable diseases when compared with the pre-vaccine era

This handout gives parents top ten reasons to protect children by vaccinating

Also available in:

Sample Vaccine Policy Statement

This sample vaccine policy statement is for pediatric providers to adapt and share their commitment to immunization with patients and parents

Handout listing Immunize.org’s top choices for reliable information.

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Printable resources and links to partner organizations to help you address hesitancy related to vaccination-related anxiety.

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Printable resources designed to help healthcare professionals in all aspects of immunization practice.

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Immunize.org experts answer challenging questions about vaccines.

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Information sheets produced by CDC that explain both the benefits and risks of a vaccine to vaccine recipients.

Real-life accounts of suffering and loss.

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From our affiliated site VaccineInformation.org, information about the importance of vaccines and answers to many common questions.

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Why Vaccinate

Overview of the importance of vaccination in preventing serious diseases from making a comeback.

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Basic information about the immune system and descriptions of the types of vaccines.

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How vaccines work, vaccine side effects, vaccine ingredients, and vaccine safety.

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On-time vaccination: the ultimate babyproofing plan.

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Information for parents about vaccine schedules, diseases vaccines prevent, preparing for vaccine visits, and common questions about vaccines.

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Why I Vaccinate: Parent Testimonials

The overwhelming majority of parents vaccinate their children, here are some of the reasons as told to AAP.

Center for Vaccine Awareness and Research (CVAR), Texas Children’s Hospital

Vaccine-Preventable Disease: The Forgotten Story

This book profiles families devastated by vaccine-preventable disease. All of the families featured in the book thought it would never happen to them. All would, in a heartbeat, grab the chance to rewrite history by immunizing themselves or their loved ones against disease.

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What Do Vaccines Do?

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The Vaccine Quest

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Additional Resources

Triumphs of Immunization

The aim of this supplement is to “underscore the unparalleled human benefits that have accrued from vaccine discovery and use before the pandemic,” and includes 16 articles on vaccines, the U.S. vaccine program, and vaccine challenges and opportunities. ( The Journal of Infectious Diseases , October 1, 2021)

Shot by Shot Video Library

A collection of more than 100 videos from people sharing their stories about vaccine-preventable diseases.

In this series of brief video clips from Vaccinate Your Family, Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Mark Sawyer, Ms. Alison Singer, and Dr. Mary Beth Koslap-Petraco, experts in the field of immunizations and infectious disease, reply to common questions about vaccines and when they are needed.

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Email CDC at [email protected]

This page was updated on October 17, 2023 .

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The Importance of Getting Fully Vaccinated

Covid remains a mortal threat not just for people like me in the upper decades of life but for almost anyone, no matter how young and healthy.

By Jane E. Brody

Too many Americans don’t seem to realize just how easily the novel coronavirus spreads and how awful Covid-19 can be. It is prompting far too many either to a) avoid getting any vaccine, b) skip the second dose if their first was Pfizer or Moderna or c) assume that the vaccine they got means they are now free to gather in any way they choose without taking any public health precautions.

Covid remains a mortal threat not just for people like me in the upper decades of life but also for almost anyone, no matter how young and healthy. Like the 37-year-old pregnant woman in Illinois who was put on life support after her baby was delivered by emergency C-section. Or the 26-year-old man in Maryland who was hospitalized on oxygen for five days and now tells everyone “ how bad it was and how scary it is. ” Although infections, hospitalizations and deaths are down from their dreadful peaks in 2020, we are still a long way from herd immunity — if we ever get there .

Sixty-one percent of people live in counties where the risk of infection right now is very high or extremely high, and whenever someone gets infected with the coronavirus, a mutation to an even more dangerous variant could arise.

After months of uncertainty about whether any vaccine that emerged from Operation Warp Speed would be safe and effective, the final highly reassuring results from the vaccine trials late last year were almost beyond belief. The members of the vaccine advisory committee who endorsed the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization of the vaccines are nongovernment experts with integrity and independent judgment. Had the government delayed the vaccine release until fully licensed, both the population and the economy likely would have been irreparably devastated.

I waited with bated breath for my turn to get immunized last winter and then for my two sons and daughters-in-law and four grandsons to become eligible this spring. All will be fully vaccinated by the end of the month when we gather for the first time in nearly two years to celebrate my 80th birthday. And all of us will continue to wear masks and maintain appropriate distance from others when we’re outdoors in close settings or indoors in public venues with people we don’t know.

In its advisory issued April 27 , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that fully vaccinated people can visit indoors with others who are fully vaccinated without wearing a mask or physically distancing and can travel domestically without getting tested or self-quarantining. They can also now “gather or conduct activities outdoors without wearing a mask, except in certain crowded settings or venues” like a live performance, parade or sporting event.

But the agency warned unvaccinated people that they are least safe — and should remain masked — when going to an indoor movie, eating in an indoor restaurant or bar, participating in a high-intensity indoor exercise class or singing in an indoor chorus. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C.’s director, said that there’s an almost 20-fold increased risk of transmitting the virus indoors.

Even for vaccinated people, she said, “until more people are vaccinated and while we still have more than 50,000 cases a day, mask use indoors will provide extra protection.”

There are good reasons for continued precautions. More than half the population, including young children, are not yet immunized. It is not known whether immunized people can acquire the virus and remain symptom-free, then unwittingly spread it to others who are vulnerable. Not everyone who wants the vaccine is able to get it for logistical or health reasons, and the vaccines may not fully protect people with immune deficiencies.

Furthermore, even though the authorized vaccines result in a stronger immune response than natural infection, we don’t yet know how long their protection will last. The Excelsior Pass I got in New York State attests to my vaccination status, but it expires mid-August, six months after my second dose, at which time a booster shot may be needed to maintain my immunity.

Speaking of which, that second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine should not be skipped . Although a delay of a few weeks in getting it is likely not critical, the immune response after one dose is relatively weak and may leave people vulnerable, especially to the more virulent variants now circulating.

Two doses are 90 percent effective in preventing infection, and that protection is expected to last much longer. You should be given an appointment for the second dose when you sign up for the first dose or when you receive it.

Some people hesitate to get the second shot because they’ve heard the side effects can be nasty. But no matter how nasty, the vaccine side effects are short-lived and not nearly as severe or persistent as the disease the vaccine protects against. After recovery from even a mild case of Covid-19, a distressing legacy like a foggy brain or chronic fatigue can persist.

And, of course, the virus can also kill, even people who are relatively young and free of underlying health risks. The fatality rate from Covid-19 based on more than 32 million confirmed cases in the United States is 1.8 percent. Over 245 million doses of Covid vaccines were administered by May 3, and a federal review of adverse events found that no deaths resulted from the vaccine.

Nearly everyone gets a temporary sore arm from the shot, but at worst people may have flulike symptoms that last a day or two. If you have the option, consider planning a day off after the second shot in case you need to take it easy. Half my family had no reaction other than the expected arm pain. One daughter-in-law developed a fever of 102 degrees and one son was unusually tired, but I was like the Energizer Bunny the next day and accomplished twice as much as usual. Go figure!

If you have a smartphone, I urge you to sign up for the side effects monitoring system established by the C.D.C. I did and was asked repeatedly how I was faring after each vaccine dose. The system, called v-safe, can alert government health authorities to the frequency of side effects and to any previously unknown complications. It will also remind you to get your second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

And a final word: If you know people still struggling to get a vaccine appointment, please try to help them if you can.

Jane Brody is the Personal Health columnist, a position she has held since 1976. She has written more than a dozen books including the best sellers “Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book” and “Jane Brody’s Good Food Book.” More about Jane E. Brody

Jane Brody’s Personal Health Advice

After joining the new york times in 1965, she was its personal health columnist from 1976 to 2022. revisit some of her most memorable writing:.

Brody’s first column, on jogging , ran on Nov. 10, 1976. Her last, on Feb. 21. In it, she highlighted the evolution of health advice throughout her career.

Personal Health has often offered useful advice and a refreshing perspective. Declutter? This is why you must . Cup of coffee? Yes, please.

As a columnist, she has never been afraid to try out, and write about, new things — from intermittent fasting to knitting groups .

How do you put into words the pain of losing a spouse of 43 years? It is “nothing like losing a parent,” she wrote of her own experience with grieving .

Need advice on aging? She has explored how to do it gracefully , building muscle strength and knee replacements .

Persuasive Essay Guide

Persuasive Essay About Covid19

How to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid19 | Examples & Tips

11 min read

Steps to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Here are the steps to help you write a persuasive essay on this topic, along with an example essay:

Step 1: Choose a Specific Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should clearly state your position on a specific aspect of COVID-19. It should be debatable and clear. For example:

Step 2: Research and Gather Information

Collect reliable and up-to-date information from reputable sources to support your thesis statement. This may include statistics, expert opinions, and scientific studies. For instance:

COVID-19 vaccination effectiveness data
Information on vaccine mandates in different countries
Expert statements from health organizations like the WHO or CDC

Step 3: Outline Your Essay

Create a clear and organized outline to structure your essay. A persuasive essay typically follows this structure:

Introduction
Background Information
Body Paragraphs (with supporting evidence)
Counterarguments (addressing opposing views)

Step 4: Write the Introduction

In the introduction, grab your reader's attention and present your thesis statement. For example:

Step 5: Provide Background Information

Offer context and background information to help your readers understand the issue better. For instance:

Step 6: Develop Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should present a single point or piece of evidence that supports your thesis statement. Use clear topic sentences, evidence, and analysis. Here's an example:

Step 7: Address Counterarguments

Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and refute them with strong counterarguments. This demonstrates that you've considered different perspectives. For example:

Step 8: Write the Conclusion

Summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement in the conclusion. End with a strong call to action or thought-provoking statement. For instance:

Step 9: Revise and Proofread

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors. Ensure that your argument flows logically.

Step 10: Cite Your Sources

Include proper citations and a bibliography page to give credit to your sources.

Remember to adjust your approach and arguments based on your target audience and the specific angle you want to take in your persuasive essay about COVID-19.

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Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid19

When writing a persuasive essay about the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s important to consider how you want to present your argument. To help you get started, here are some example essays for you to read:

Check out some more PDF examples below:

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Pandemic

Sample Of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 In The Philippines - Example

If you're in search of a compelling persuasive essay on business, don't miss out on our “ persuasive essay about business ” blog!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Vaccine

Covid19 vaccines are one of the ways to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have been a source of controversy. Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others.

A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.

Below are some examples of persuasive essays on getting vaccinated for Covid-19.

Covid19 Vaccine Persuasive Essay

Persuasive Essay on Covid Vaccines

Interested in thought-provoking discussions on abortion? Read our persuasive essay about abortion blog to eplore arguments!

Examples of Persuasive Essay About Covid-19 Integration

Covid19 has drastically changed the way people interact in schools, markets, and workplaces. In short, it has affected all aspects of life. However, people have started to learn to live with Covid19.

Writing a persuasive essay about it shouldn't be stressful. Read the sample essay below to get idea for your own essay about Covid19 integration.

Persuasive Essay About Working From Home During Covid19

Searching for the topic of Online Education? Our persuasive essay about online education is a must-read.

Examples of Argumentative Essay About Covid 19

Covid-19 has been an ever-evolving issue, with new developments and discoveries being made on a daily basis.

Writing an argumentative essay about such an issue is both interesting and challenging. It allows you to evaluate different aspects of the pandemic, as well as consider potential solutions.

Here are some examples of argumentative essays on Covid19.

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 Sample

Argumentative Essay About Covid19 With Introduction Body and Conclusion

Looking for a persuasive take on the topic of smoking? You'll find it all related arguments in out Persuasive Essay About Smoking blog!

Examples of Persuasive Speeches About Covid-19

Do you need to prepare a speech about Covid19 and need examples? We have them for you!

Persuasive speeches about Covid-19 can provide the audience with valuable insights on how to best handle the pandemic. They can be used to advocate for specific changes in policies or simply raise awareness about the virus.

Check out some examples of persuasive speeches on Covid-19:

Persuasive Speech About Covid-19 Example

Persuasive Speech About Vaccine For Covid-19

You can also read persuasive essay examples on other topics to master your persuasive techniques!

Tips to Write a Persuasive Essay About Covid-19

Writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19 requires a thoughtful approach to present your arguments effectively.

Here are some tips to help you craft a compelling persuasive essay on this topic:

Choose a Specific Angle

Start by narrowing down your focus. COVID-19 is a broad topic, so selecting a specific aspect or issue related to it will make your essay more persuasive and manageable. For example, you could focus on vaccination, public health measures, the economic impact, or misinformation.

Provide Credible Sources

Support your arguments with credible sources such as scientific studies, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Reliable sources enhance the credibility of your essay.

Use Persuasive Language

Employ persuasive techniques, such as ethos (establishing credibility), pathos (appealing to emotions), and logos (using logic and evidence). Use vivid examples and anecdotes to make your points relatable.

Organize Your Essay

Structure your essay involves creating a persuasive essay outline and establishing a logical flow from one point to the next. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, and transitions between paragraphs should be smooth and logical.

Emphasize Benefits

Highlight the benefits of your proposed actions or viewpoints. Explain how your suggestions can improve public health, safety, or well-being. Make it clear why your audience should support your position.

Use Visuals -H3

Incorporate graphs, charts, and statistics when applicable. Visual aids can reinforce your arguments and make complex data more accessible to your readers.

Call to Action

End your essay with a strong call to action. Encourage your readers to take a specific step or consider your viewpoint. Make it clear what you want them to do or think after reading your essay.

Revise and Edit

Proofread your essay for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Make sure your arguments are well-structured and that your writing flows smoothly.

Seek Feedback

Have someone else read your essay to get feedback. They may offer valuable insights and help you identify areas where your persuasive techniques can be improved.

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Common Topics for a Persuasive Essay on COVID-19

Here are some persuasive essay topics on COVID-19:

The Importance of Vaccination Mandates for COVID-19 Control
Balancing Public Health and Personal Freedom During a Pandemic
The Economic Impact of Lockdowns vs. Public Health Benefits
The Role of Misinformation in Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
Remote Learning vs. In-Person Education: What's Best for Students?
The Ethics of Vaccine Distribution: Prioritizing Vulnerable Populations
The Mental Health Crisis Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Long-Term Effects of COVID-19 on Healthcare Systems
Global Cooperation vs. Vaccine Nationalism in Fighting the Pandemic
The Future of Telemedicine: Expanding Healthcare Access Post-COVID-19

In search of more inspiring topics for your next persuasive essay? Our persuasive essay topics blog has plenty of ideas!

To sum it up,

You have read good sample essays and got some helpful tips. You now have the tools you needed to write a persuasive essay about Covid-19. So don't let the doubts stop you, start writing!

If you need professional writing help, don't worry! We've got that for you as well.

MyPerfectWords.com is a professional essay writing service that can help you craft an excellent persuasive essay on Covid-19. Our experienced essay writer will create a well-structured, insightful paper in no time!

So don't hesitate and get in touch with our persuasive essay writing service today!

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there any ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about covid-19.

Yes, there are ethical considerations when writing a persuasive essay about COVID-19. It's essential to ensure the information is accurate, not contribute to misinformation, and be sensitive to the pandemic's impact on individuals and communities. Additionally, respecting diverse viewpoints and emphasizing public health benefits can promote ethical communication.

What impact does COVID-19 have on society?

The impact of COVID-19 on society is far-reaching. It has led to job and economic losses, an increase in stress and mental health disorders, and changes in education systems. It has also had a negative effect on social interactions, as people have been asked to limit their contact with others.

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The importance and benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19

The pandemic has been one of the greatest health crises in recorded history. Thanks to rapid advances in science and technology, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer. Major vaccination efforts are currently underway to immunize the world's population. According to data from health authorities compiled by Our World in Data , 39.7% of the world's population has received at least one dose, while, as of today, almost 2.1 billion people across the globe are fully vaccinated.

There are many theories surrounding Covid-19 vaccination. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) and expert health authorities around the world are urging people to get vaccinated as the best solution to end the pandemic. The sooner people are immunized, the faster it will be possible not only to slow the spread of the disease, but also to limit its impact on the economy.

The benefits of vaccination

According to the WHO, vaccination is a simple, safe and effective way to protect against harmful diseases before coming into contact with them, as it activates the body's natural defenses to learn to resist specific infections and strengthen the immune system.

In this sense, vaccination against COVID-19 will reduce the risk of becoming seriously ill and dying, since the person will be better protected. Immunity will not be 100%, since a vaccinated person can still catch the disease; however, the consequences for the body are expected to be much less.

The main benefits are:

COVID-19 vaccines can also prevent you from becoming seriously ill even if you contract the virus.
TAll Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
By getting vaccinated yourself, you also protect the people around you.
It is a safer way to develop immunity.

Accordingly, leading organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the United States state on their website that the vaccines are safe . They highlight three main points:

Vaccines were developed based on scientific knowledge used for decades.
They are not experimental. They went through all the required stages of clinical trials. Extensive testing and monitoring have shown these vaccines to be safe and effective.
COVID-19 vaccines have undergone, and will continue to undergo, the most intensive safety monitoring in history..

Vaccination around the world

Worldwide, more than 3.19 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine have been administered so far, according to figures compiled by Our World in Data . According to these figures, almost 27% of the world's population has had both doses (approximately 2.1 billion people).

By country, China leads the global tally with more than two billion vaccines, followed by India, with more than 632 million doses administered. These countries are followed by Western nations such as the United States, which has administered 368 million injections; Brazil, with more than 187 million; and Turkey, with 93 million.

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Front Microbiol

Impact of Vaccines; Health, Economic and Social Perspectives

Charlene m. c. rodrigues.

1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

2 Department of Paediatric Infectious Diseases, St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom

Stanley A. Plotkin

3 Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

In the 20th century, the development, licensing and implementation of vaccines as part of large, systematic immunization programs started to address health inequities that existed globally. However, at the time of writing, access to vaccines that prevent life-threatening infectious diseases remains unequal to all infants, children and adults in the world. This is a problem that many individuals and agencies are working hard to address globally. As clinicians and biomedical scientists we often focus on the health benefits that vaccines provide, in the prevention of ill-health and death from infectious pathogens. Here we discuss the health, economic and social benefits of vaccines that have been identified and studied in recent years, impacting all regions and all age groups. After learning of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in December 2019, and its potential for global dissemination to cause COVID-19 disease was realized, there was an urgent need to develop vaccines at an unprecedented rate and scale. As we appreciate and quantify the health, economic and social benefits of vaccines and immunization programs to individuals and society, we should endeavor to communicate this to the public and policy makers, for the benefit of endemic, epidemic, and pandemic diseases.

Introduction

“The impact of vaccination on the health of the world’s peoples is hard to exaggerate. With the exception of safe water, no other modality has had such a major effect on mortality reduction and population growth” ( Plotkin and Mortimer, 1988 ).

The development of safe and efficacious vaccination against diseases that cause substantial morbidity and mortality has been one of the foremost scientific advances of the 21st century. Vaccination, along with sanitation and clean drinking water, are public health interventions that are undeniably responsible for improved health outcomes globally. It is estimated that vaccines have prevented 6 million deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases annually ( Ehreth, 2003 ). By 2055, the earth’s population is estimated to reach almost 10 billion ( United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019 ), a feat that in part is due to effective vaccines that prevent disease and prolong life expectancy across all continents. That said, there is still much to be done to ensure the financing, provision, distribution, and administration of vaccines to all populations, in particular those which are difficult to reach, including those skeptical about their protective value and those living in civil disruption. Agencies including the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiative (CEPI), with their multiple funding streams have been instrumental in expanding vaccine benefits to all. These importance of these organizations in global co-operation and participation was essential in the setting of the 2019 global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2, in light of the health and economic impact of COVID-19 on societies in high-, middle- and low-income countries. This review will highlight the benefits of vaccinations to society from the perspectives of health, economy, and social fabric ( Figure 1 ), which need to be considered in the overall assessment of impact to ensure that vaccines are prioritized by those making funding decisions.

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The impact of vaccines according to their health, economic or social benefit.

Brief History of Vaccine Development

Human use of preparations to prevent specific infections have been described since 1500 AD, beginning in China ( Needham, 2000 ) where smallpox was prevented by variolation, which is the introduction of material from scabs into the skin. In 1796 in the United Kingdom, Edward Jenner observed the immunity to smallpox of milkmaids having previously had natural infection with cowpox ( Jenner, 1798 ). He determined that inoculating small amounts of pus from the lesions of cowpox, presumably containing a virus related to vaccinia, into susceptible hosts rendered them immune to smallpox. The vaccine against smallpox was developed in 1798. The next phase of scientific developments involving the manipulation of infectious agents to extract suitable vaccine antigens took almost a century of research. Louis Pasteur’s work with attenuation by oxygen or heat led to live-attenuated chicken cholera, inactivated anthrax and live-attenuated rabies vaccines at the turn of the 20th century ( Pasteur, 1880 , 1881 , 1885 ). Alternative methods of attenuation using serial passage of Mycobacterium bovis led to the live Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) ( Calmette, 1927 ) vaccine, still in use today for the prevention of tuberculosis. Serial passage was also used in the development of yellow fever vaccines ( Theiler and Smith, 1937a ) which are grown in chicken embryo tissues ( Theiler and Smith, 1937b ). Whole cell killed bacterial vaccines were developed when methods to treat and kill bacteria through heat or chemicals were established and whole cell typhoid, cholera and pertussis vaccines resulted at the end of the 19th Century. In 1923, Alexander Glenny and Barbara Hopkins developed methods to inactivate bacterial toxins with formaldehyde, leading to the diphtheria and tetanus toxoid vaccines ( Glenny and Hopkins, 1923 ).

Advances in virus culture in vitro allowed viral pathogens to be studied in greater detail and attenuation methods due to cultivation in artificial conditions led to the live oral polio, measles, rubella, mumps and varicella virus vaccines. In the 1960’s at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, vaccines were developed using capsular polysaccharides ( Gold and Artenstein, 1971 ; Artenstein, 1975 ), of encapsulated organisms including meningococci and later pneumococci ( Austrian, 1989 ) and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) ( Anderson et al., 1972 ). To protect against multiple serotype variants of polysaccharide capsules, polyvalent vaccines were developed and later conjugated to carrier proteins to enhance their efficacy in infants in particular by recruiting T-cell mediated help to induce memory B-cells ( Schneerson et al., 1980 ). Vaccines made solely from proteins were rare, with the exception of the toxoid vaccines, but the acellular pertussis vaccine containing five protein antigens, was developed to mitigate the unwanted effects of the whole cell vaccine ( Sato and Sato, 1999 ).

The end of the 20th century marked a revolution in molecular biology and provided insights into microbiology and immunology allowing a greater understanding of pathogen epitopes and host responses to vaccination. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing has enabled the development of vaccines against RNA viruses possessing multiple variants of epitopes, such as the live and inactivated influenza vaccines ( Maassab and DeBorde, 1985 ) and live rotavirus vaccines ( Clark et al., 2006 ). DNA manipulation and excision allowed the use of surface antigen for hepatitis B viral vectors ( Plotkin, 2014 ). The human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine benefits from enhanced immunogenicity due to the formation of virus-like particles by the L1 antigen of each virus contained in the vaccine ( Kirnbauer et al., 1992 ). Bacterial genome sequencing has provided in depth analysis of meningococcal antigens, to identify potential proteins for meningococcal B vaccines ( Serruto et al., 2012 ).

Vaccine development was tested in 2020 when a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged from China causing a severe acute respiratory illness, which subsequently spread globally. Within 5 months of the discovery of this virus (7th January 2020) ( Zhu et al., 2020 ) and person-person transmission ( Chan et al., 2020 ), 5,697,334 cases had been identified, with orders of magnitude likely not measured and almost no country escaped the pandemic. Owing to the previous advances in vaccinology, by 8th April 2020, there were 73 vaccine candidates under pre-clinical investigation ( Thanh Le et al., 2020 ). Of these, six were in Phase 1 or 1/2 trials and one was in Phase 2/3 trials by 28th May 2020. The rapidity of this response demonstrated the ability to harness existing technologies including: RNA vaccine platforms ( {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT04283461","term_id":"NCT04283461"}} NCT04283461 ), DNA vaccine platforms ( {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT04336410","term_id":"NCT04336410"}} NCT04336410 ), recombinant vector vaccines ( {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT04313127","term_id":"NCT04313127"}} NCT04313127 , {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT04324606","term_id":"NCT04324606"}} NCT04324606 ) and adjuvants. The regulation, manufacturer and distribution of these vaccines will require expedition given the global public health need, from a period of many years to a matter of months. The efficacy and health impact of these vaccines is yet to be established, but if they are effective, then vaccines need to be made available for all global regions affected by SARS-CoV-2. The funding of this endeavor will prove challenging in a global context of national social and economic lockdown and massive government borrowing, but the justification for this provision will be through the multiple benefits to society that will need healthy citizens to rebuild economies in the decades post-COVID-19.

The history of vaccination is not complete without describing the public health intervention that led to the routine use of these vaccines for children globally. The Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI) was founded by WHO in 1974 with the aim of providing routine vaccines to all children by 1990 ( World Health Assembly, 1974 ). In 1977, global policies for immunization against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, polio, and tuberculosis were set out. The EPI includes hepatitis B, Hib, and pneumococcal vaccines in many areas and by 2017, 85% of the world’s children (12–23 months of age) received diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and measles vaccines ( World Bank, 2019 ).

Health Benefits of Vaccination

Reduction in infectious diseases morbidity and mortality.

The most significant impact of vaccines has been to prevent morbidity and mortality from serious infections that disproportionately affect children. Vaccines are estimated to prevent almost six million deaths/year and to save 386 million life years and 96 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) globally ( Ehreth, 2003 ). The traditional measures of vaccine impact include: vaccine efficacy, the direct protection offered to a vaccinated group under optimal conditions e.g., trial settings; or vaccine effectiveness, the direct and indirect effect of vaccines on the population in a real-life setting ( Wilder-Smith et al., 2017 ). Providing a numerical measure of vaccine impact therefore involves estimating the extent of morbidity and mortality prevented. In the United States in 2009, amongst an annual birth cohort vaccinated against 13 diseases it was estimated that nearly 20 million cases of disease and ∼42,000 deaths were prevented ( Zhou et al., 2009 ). Infectious diseases that accounted for major mortality and morbidity in the early 20th century in the United States all showed over a 90% decline in incidence by 2017 from the pre-vaccine peak incidence ( Roush and Murphy, 2007 ), due to high vaccine uptake of over 90% for the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis), MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) and polio vaccines ( World Health Organisation, 2019a ; Table 1 ). A similar pattern of infectious diseases reduction was seen across other high-income countries, demonstrating the efficacy of vaccines when available and accessible.

Vaccine impact in United States comparing the incidence of diseases prior to the implementation of vaccine ( Roush and Murphy, 2007 ), described as the pre-vaccine era and the vaccine coverage ( Hill et al., 2017 ) and disease incidence ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017 ) in 2017, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Globally, the provision of vaccines is more challenging in many low- and middle- income countries (LMIC), as evidenced by the failure to make the EPI vaccines available to every child by 1990, irrespective of setting ( Keja et al., 1988 ). Central to this is limited financial resources, but other barriers to vaccine introduction include: underappreciation of the value of vaccines locally/regionally though insufficient relevant data on disease burden, vaccine efficacy, or cost-effectiveness; inadequate healthcare infrastructure for vaccine handling, storage, programmatic management, and disease surveillance; and lack of global, regional or local policy-making and leadership ( Munira and Fritzen, 2007 ; Hajjeh, 2011 ). In 2018, the global uptake of three doses of DTaP reached 86% which corresponded to 116,300,000 infants ( World Health Organisation, 2019a ). The vaccine coverage is, however, variable between low-, middle- and high-income countries because of a combination of economic and political circumstances as well as variable access to non-governmental support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance ( Turner et al., 2018 ; Figure 2 ). Nevertheless, there has been a decrease in the global burden of diseases caused by vaccine-preventable pathogens ( Figure 3 ) enabling healthier lives for many millions of children. A further benefit following vaccination, is the evidence that although vaccines may not always prevent an infection, for example VZV or pertussis, a milder disease course may follow ( Andre et al., 2008 ; Bonanni et al., 2015 ).

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Vaccine uptake across different regions defined by economic status by the World Bank into high- (solid line), middle- (dashed line), and low-income countries (dotted line) for the past 20 years. Data from the World Health Organization and UNICEF dataset “Coverage Estimates Series” ( World Health Organization [WHO] and United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 2019 ).

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Reduction in infectious diseases globally. Across all world regions, data from the WHO, for the last 20 years showing the control of diphtheria and tetanus and the decline in rubella and congenital rubella syndrome (data not shown). Data from the World Health Organization dataset “Reported cases of vaccine-preventable diseases” ( World Health Organisation, 2019c ).

Eradication of Infectious Diseases

Global disease eradication can be achieved for pathogens that are restricted to human reservoirs. For eradication of infectious diseases, high levels of population immunity are required globally, to ensure no ongoing transmission in our well-connected world ( Andre et al., 2008 ). Furthermore, surveillance systems must be in place to monitor the decline in disease, with accurate and reliable diagnostic testing to monitor ongoing cases. At the time of writing, the only infectious disease that has been eradicated in humans by vaccination is smallpox. This disease had afflicted humans for millenia, with the earliest evidence found in Egyptian mummies from 1000 BC ( Geddes, 2006 ). Jenner’s successful development of the smallpox vaccine using vaccinia virus ( Jenner, 1798 ) led to the ultimate eradication of the disease through ring vaccination as announced by the World Health Assembly in 1980 ( Strassburg, 1982 ), which was an historic public health achievement. The second example of eradication was of the rinderpest virus in livestock, an infection that indirectly led to human loss of life through loss of agriculture leading to humanitarian crises through famine and poverty. Rinderpest virus infects cattle, buffalo and numerous other domestic species, with widespread disease affecting large parts of Africa and Europe in the 19th century ( Roeder et al., 2013 ). The Plowright tissue culture rinderpest vaccine, developed during the 1950s, was used for mass vaccination campaigns, alongside other public health measures, leading to eradication in 2011 ( Morens et al., 2011 ).

The next infection targeted for eradication is wild polio virus. This devastating paralytic disease routinely afflicted children and adults in both industrialized and developing settings, prior to the development of vaccines. Two polio vaccines, the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) and the live-attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV) became available in 1955 and 1963, respectively ( Plotkin, 2014 ), both able to protect against all three wild types of polio virus. Both vaccines have been used globally, with live-attenuated OPV much cheaper and easier to administer but carrying the risk of causing circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) owing to back-mutation and re-acquisition of neurovirulence. Hence, due to its safety IPV was preferred in industrialized regions and those where the polio incidence was low. In 1998, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the largest public-private partnership led by national governments in partnership with the WHO, Rotary International, United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and UNICEF was launched with the aim of global polio eradication by 2000. Although this target was not met due to lack of funding, political will, and competing health initiatives, there was a 99% reduction in polio incidence by 2000 ( Lien and Heymann, 2013 ). By 2003, there were only six endemic countries with new cases: Egypt, Niger, India, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, of which only the latter four had new cases by 2005. Eradication in India was problematic due to the high birth rates and poor sanitation amongst densely populated regions with marginalized communities and high population mobility ( Thacker et al., 2016 ). India was declared polio free in 2014. Wild polio virus type 2 was eradicated in 2015, the last case of wild type 3 was in 2012 and eradication announced in 2019, with wild type 1 virus remaining in two countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan ( World Health Organisation, 2019b ). In 2019, Nigeria was declared 3 years free of wild polio, the last country in Africa to declare any cases. In the first 6 months of 2020, there were 51 and 17 cases of wild type 1 polio reported in Pakistan and Afghanistan respectively ( Global Polio Eradication Initiative, 2019 ). Ongoing programs to roll out universal vaccination in both countries remain hindered by armed conflict, political instability, remote communities and underdeveloped infrastructure. The risk of the OPV recipients developing cVDPV disease, with transmission through the faeco-oral route to cause outbreaks of vaccine-derived paralytic poliomyelitis remains a concerning obstacle in the eradication process, requiring intensive surveillance.

Herd Immunity

The overriding health benefit perceived by most vaccine recipients is their personal, direct, protection. The added value of vaccination, on a population level, is the potential to generate herd immunity. Where a sufficiently high proportion of the population are vaccinated, transmission of the infecting agent is halted thereby protecting the unvaccinated, who may be those too young, too vulnerable, or too immunosuppressed to receive vaccines. Highly successful vaccination programs have been in place as part of the routine EPI, against encapsulated bacteria that are carried asymptomatically in the oropharynx but that can invade and cause septicemia and meningitis in all age groups. Vaccines against Neisseria meningitidis ( Gold and Artenstein, 1971 ), Streptococcus pneumoniae ( Austrian, 1989 ), and Hib ( Anderson et al., 1972 ) were developed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, respectively, using their polysaccharide capsules as vaccine antigens, which successfully induced protective immunity (direct protection). Conjugation of these polysaccharides to carrier proteins in the 1990s improved their efficacy by not only ensuring a T cell response and immune memory, but by reducing acquisition of pharyngeal carriage of these organisms, thus providing indirect protection and thereby preventing ongoing transmission ( Pollard et al., 2009 ). This was first observed in national carriage studies in the United Kingdom in 1999–2001 during a mass vaccination campaign against serogroup C N. meningitidis ( Maiden et al., 2008 ) and was a major contributing factor to the declining disease thereafter.

Herd (population) immunity requires high levels of vaccine uptake, to limit the number of unvaccinated people and the opportunity for pathogen transmission between them. The proportion of a given population required to induce herd immunity through vaccination is lower for the bacterial infections and conjugate polysaccharide vaccines, as their basic reproductive number (R 0 ) is lower than viral infections like measles, varicella or polio ( Table 2 ). Measles virus can cause devastating disease ranging from acute presentations with pneumonia or encephalitis, to immune amnesia and long-term complications such as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis ( Mina et al., 2015 , 2019 ; Moss, 2017 ; Petrova et al., 2019 ). The live-attenuated measles vaccine is highly efficacious and the first dose is recommended at 9–12 months of age. To protect those who cannot receive live vaccines (younger infants, pregnant women, the immunosuppressed) from acquiring measles in the community, at least 93–95% of the population is required to be vaccinated with two doses in order to interrupt measles virus transmission. In many countries in Europe and in the United States, this level of vaccination uptake is falling ( Wise, 2018 ), due to a combination of reduced accessibility to health services and vaccine misinformation. As a result, some countries, including the United Kingdom and United States, where elimination of measles had been declared have had a resurgence of disease ( Wise, 2019 ). For high-risk individuals who are unable to be vaccinated, herd immunity represents a life-saving protection strategy against many infections. An alternative strategy, cocooning, has been employed with limited success for pertussis and influenza ( Grizas et al., 2012 ), where their close/household contacts are vaccinated to prevent transmission.

Vaccines with the potential to induce herd immunity, with the infectious agent, vaccine type, and thresholds of population vaccination needed for herd immunity ( Peltola et al., 1999 ; Whitney et al., 2003 ; Donaghy et al., 2006 ; Fine and Griffiths, 2007 ; Maiden et al., 2008 ; Curns et al., 2010 ; Paulke-Korinek et al., 2011 ; Plans-Rubio, 2012 ; Daugla et al., 2014 ; Tabrizi et al., 2014 ; Funk et al., 2019 ; Palmer et al., 2019 ).

Herd immunity has been observed for gastrointestinal infections with vaccines against cholera (oral cholera vaccine) and rotavirus (oral rotavirus vaccines). Early adopters of rotavirus vaccines included the United States (2006) and Austria (2007) where there were dramatic reductions in disease observed in the vaccinated infant cohort, and also in the older age groups of children and adults ( Curns et al., 2010 ; Paulke-Korinek et al., 2011 ), suggesting that the reduction in disease and shedding of virus in the stool stopped transmission to healthy household contacts. For the OPV, herd protection may also be induced through vaccine virus shedding and spread to unvaccinated people ( Fine and Griffiths, 2007 ).

Reduction in Secondary Infections That Complicate Vaccine-Preventable Diseases

Vaccines can prevent diseases beyond the specific infection they are designed to target. Infections with pathogens, in particular viruses, can predispose to the acquisition of other bacterial infections. For example, influenza virus infection, both seasonal and pandemic, is frequently complicated by bacterial pneumonia and acute otitis media (OM), and infrequently Aspergillus pneumonia/pneumonitis. During the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, secondary bacterial bronchopneumonia with S. pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes , H. influenzae , and Staphylococcus aureus identified at autopsy, likely contributed to the excess mortality observed amongst healthy children and adults ( Morens and Fauci, 2007 ). Influenza vaccinations can be beneficial in preventing these complications and also morbidity including acute OM in children; a systematic review demonstrated influenza vaccine efficacy against OM of 51% (21–70%) ( Manzoli et al., 2007 ). Further, there is evidence that inactivated influenza vaccines administered to pregnant women can reduce the hospital admission with acute respiratory illnesses in their infants up to 6 months of age ( Regan et al., 2016 ). Amongst pregnant, HIV-negative women in South Africa, infants (<3 months) were protected against hospitalization with all-cause lower respiratory tract infections with a vaccine efficacy of 43% ( p = 0.05), including primary viral and secondary bacterial causes ( Nunes et al., 2017 ). Additionally, in children pneumococcal conjugate vaccines were observed to reduce the incidence of influenza-associated hospital admissions in United States ( Simonsen et al., 2011 ), Spain ( Dominguez et al., 2013 ), and South Africa ( Madhi et al., 2004 ; Abadom et al., 2016 ), through the prevention of secondary bacterial infections following primary influenza infection.

The introduction of the live-attenuated measles vaccine in the 1970s was observed to reduce both measles and non-measles mortality in children ( Aaby et al., 2003 ). Measles causes severe pneumonia, encephalitis, and the long-term sequel of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis ( Moss, 2017 ), but the decline in mortality was not limited to preventing these alone ( Aaby et al., 2003 ). Mathematical modeling of vaccination and immunological research demonstrated that measles causes an immunological amnesia, eliminating B cell populations and thus immune memory, leaving measles survivors susceptible to all the infective agents they had previously developed immunity against; it is estimated to take 3 years for immune recovery to occur ( Mina et al., 2015 ).

Prevention of Cancer

Historically, vaccines were developed against very severe infections with major morbidity and mortality from acute disease. As non-communicable diseases, including cancer, become the most frequent causes of death in industrialized countries and some developing countries, vaccines are being used to prevent these too, when the infectious agents are involved in carcinogenesis. Hepatitis B prevalence is high in regions of East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific Islands. Chronic hepatitis B infection can lead to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma ( Bogler et al., 2018 ). Vertical transmission of hepatitis B is problematic as 70–90% of babies born to HbsAg and HbeAg positive mothers will become infected without prophylaxis administered to babies; with ∼90% of infants developing chronic hepatitis ( Borgia et al., 2012 ; Gentile and Borgia, 2014 ). The chronic hepatitis B carriage status of mothers is routinely checked at the start of pregnancy, in order to assess the need to vaccinate the infant after birth. The use of both hepatitis B vaccine, containing hepatitis B surface antigen, and immunoglobulin containing hepatitis B antibody can be used to minimize vertical transmission, with evidence from a 20-year-long study in Thailand demonstrating 100% prevention of transmission ( Poovorawan et al., 2011 ).

The sexually transmitted HPV is responsible for genital tract and oropharyngeal infections as a precursor to causing oncological disease affecting the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, anal tract, and pharynx in both men and women. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer globally, with 528,000 new cases annually and peak incidence in young women aged 25–34 years ( Ferlay et al., 2012 ). The HPV serotypes 16 and 18 carry a high-risk for cervical cancer ( Wang et al., 2018 ) and vaccination against these specific serotypes has been available since 2006 through bivalent (16 and 18), quadrivalent (6, 11, 16, and 18), and nonavalent (6, 11, 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52, 58) vaccines, which are now available to individuals from the age of 9 years ( Gupta et al., 2017 ). A vaccination program started in the United Kingdom in 2008, and at the time of writing over 10.5 million doses had been given to girls ( Public Health England, 2018 ), with the aim of preventing primary infection with HPV. The vaccine coverage was 83.8% for 13–14 year old girls in England in 2017/18 ( Public Health England, 2019 ). In July 2018, the vaccine was approved for use in boys ( Public Health England, 2019 ). After a decade of use, there has been an observed decline in the genital infections caused by serotypes 16 and 18 ( Public Health England, 2018 ), with further time needed to observe the fall in cervical cancer incidence. However, the incidence of pre-invasive cervical diseases has been reduced by 79–89% in Scottish women over 20 who were vaccinated with bivalent HPV vaccine when aged 12–13 years, with evidence of herd protection ( Palmer et al., 2019 ), offering a promising outlook for the reduction of cervical cancer in the future. An additional benefit of HPV vaccines, is their impact on neonatal morbidity and mortality, through the reduction in surgical treatment of cervical neoplasias, and the related preterm births and complications ( Soergel et al., 2012 ).

Preventing Antibiotic Resistance

The rise in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a universal threat. The use of antibiotics in humans, exposes the bacteria that reside in our microbiota to selection pressures resulting in the development of AMR. As the bacteria constituting the host microbiota are frequently responsible for invasive diseases such as: meningitis, pneumonia, urinary tract, or abdominal infections, the risk of developing infections that are difficult or eventually impossible to treat is fast becoming a reality ( Brinkac et al., 2017 ). In regions where resistant pathogens are circulating at high frequency, such as India or regions of Europe ( Logan and Weinstein, 2017 ), patients will be faced with choosing between having elective surgical procedures or chemotherapy for malignancy, and the risk of acquiring potentially untreatable, multi-drug resistant bacterial infections ( Liu et al., 2016 ). Vaccination is crucial in mitigating this risk, by preventing people from developing viral and bacterial infections in the first instance, and therefore reducing the antibiotic burden to which their microbiota are exposed. The development of AMR in bacteria is a cumulative process with frequent, repeated exposure to broad spectrum antibiotics as a major driver. Children and the elderly who are at particular risk of infection can benefit from vaccines against common primary and secondary infections such as: pneumonia (prevented by PCV, PPSV, influenza, and measles vaccines), OM (PCV, Hib, and measles vaccines), cellulitis secondary to VZV (VZV vaccine), and typhoid fever (typhoid vaccine) which alleviates the need for antibiotics being prescribed or bought ( Kyaw et al., 2006 ; Palmu et al., 2014 ). The extent to which vaccination contributes to antimicrobial stewardship was highlighted by its inclusion in vaccine cost-effectiveness analyses as part of national United Kingdom policy ( Bonanni et al., 2015 ).

Economic Benefits

Cost savings.

Vaccines are highly beneficial on a population level and also cost-effective ( Shearley, 1999 ) in comparison to other public health interventions ( Bloom et al., 2005 ). Government departments are required to perform systematic economic analyses of vaccines and vaccine programs to justify their purchase in view of pressure on public and private finances globally, this was exacerbated by the 2008 financial crash. A vaccination program has clear direct costs including: vaccine purchase, infrastructure to run the program and maintain the cold chain, and healthcare/administration personnel. Governments, sometimes supported by charities and non-governmental organizations, invest in these with the intention of improving health. The reduction in morbidity and mortality associated with successful vaccine programs, through a combination of direct and indirect protection, has led to reduced incidence of diseases and their associated treatments and healthcare costs ( Deogaonkar et al., 2012 ). This potentially leads to economic growth, with less money spent owing to the costs averted through fewer medical tests, procedures, treatments and less time off work by patients/parents. Additionally, the use of combination vaccines e.g., DTaP/IPV/Hib/HepB provides protection against an increased number of diseases, with no additional infrastructure costs i.e. the same number of injections per child within existing immunization programs.

The cost-effectiveness analyses of vaccination programs demonstrate that they are overwhelmingly worth the investment, with most programs costing less than $50 per life gained, orders of magnitude less than prevention of diseases like hypertension ( Ehreth, 2003 ; Bloom et al., 2005 ). The returns on investment in vaccines, given their increasing provision through Gavi, have been estimated at 12–18% ( Bloom et al., 2005 ), but this is likely an underestimate. The monetary advantages of vaccination programs are important both to industrialized nations, such as the United States which obtains a net economic benefit of $69 billion, but also in 94 LMIC where investment of $34 billion, resulted in savings of $586 billion from the direct illness costs ( Ozawa et al., 2016 ; Orenstein and Ahmed, 2017 ). The net economic impact of eradication of disease has been estimated for both smallpox and polio. For smallpox, the eradication costs were over 100 million USD, but there are cost savings of 1.35 billion USD annually, with elimination of polio estimated to save 1.5 billion USD annually ( Barrett, 2004 ; Bloom et al., 2005 ). A less well-considered economic saving, not captured in cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit analyses, is from the prevention of long-term morbidity following acute infections ( Bloom et al., 2005 ), for example hearing impairment following pneumococcal meningitis or limb amputation following meningococcal disease, along with broader productivity gains ( Deogaonkar et al., 2012 ), which could have a major impact on LMIC adoption of vaccine programs.

Productivity Gains

The relationship between health and the economy is bidirectional, whereby economic growth enables funding in investments that improve health; and a healthy population contributes to and enhances an economy. These benefits of vaccinations and other public health interventions including sanitation, clean water, and antibiotics, are important for social as well as economic reasons. It has been suggested that the economic impact of vaccines should be considered more broadly than just the averted healthcare costs from prevented illness episodes and associated carer costs ( Deogaonkar et al., 2012 ; Barnighausen et al., 2014 ; Bonanni et al., 2015 ; Gessner et al., 2017 ; Wilder-Smith et al., 2017 ). Bärnighausen et al. (2011) , set out a framework to consider productivity gains measured by: outcome and behavior; community health and economic externalities; risk reduction; and health gains. Healthy children demonstrate improved educational attainment at school through better attendance and better cognitive performance ( Barham and Calimeria, 2008 ; Bloom et al., 2011 ; Deogaonkar et al., 2012 ). The impact of hearing loss from mumps, rubella or pneumococcal infections, or visual impairment from measles may require specific educational support, whereas the cognitive deficits from those childhood infections may require substantial remedial input. As more children survive to adulthood, a larger adult workforce is available, who when healthy can work for longer and more productively both physically and mentally ( Bloom and Canning, 2000 ; Bloom et al., 2005 ); though to date this has been observed largely following other health improvements, not vaccination specifically ( Jit et al., 2015 ). As a result of vaccination healthy and economically successful populations have lower fertility rates and smaller families ( Sah, 1991 ; Andre et al., 2008 ). With improved health and therefore life expectancy, there is a wider effect on families who may choose to invest more money in their future, for example to enhance their education or through savings ( Jit et al., 2015 ). Overall, vaccine programs should be viewed as an investment in human capital, providing enduring impact on economies worldwide.

Minimizing the Impact on Family

The economic impact of adult illness is evident from loss of productivity and pay for the duration of the illness and recovery period. The impact of childhood illness falls primarily on their adult carers, generally parents. In most industrialized regions, two-parent families are reliant on both parents undertaking at least part-time or full-time work. Therefore, when a child is unwell with childhood illnesses, which may or may not necessitate admission to hospital, the parent will invariably have to forego their paid employment to care for the child. In seven European countries one parent or carer required time off work in 39–91% of rotavirus gastroenteritis cases ( Van der Wielen et al., 2010 ). This loss of productivity in the parental workforce tends to disproportionately affect women, but loss of either parental attendance at work reduces overall employer productivity and in the short-term is rarely replaced. This argument was made for the impact of chicken pox on children, whereby the exclusion from school mandates parental caring at home for a period until the lesions are crusted over. VZV vaccines are estimated to have had a similar impact as rotavirus vaccine in United States studies ( Lieu et al., 1994 ). In many regions, mothers are still the primary carers, spending their days at home caring for children and maintaining the household; in these settings, the impact on this unpaid work is harder to determine.

It is of paramount importance to quantify and include productivity gains and the wider effects in analyses of impact for vaccines with only moderate efficacy, as calculated using traditional metrics. Vaccines such as the RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine, CYD-TDV dengue vaccine and rotavirus vaccine used in LMIC all have limited ability to broadly protect populations over a long duration but the public health benefits were important in vaccine implementation decisions in those countries ( Wilder-Smith et al., 2017 ). This suggests a paradigm for alternative regulatory requirements with a focus on public health outcomes ( Gessner et al., 2017 ).

Cost-Effective Preparedness for Outbreaks

As human populations grow and their use of the finite land resources increases, we are in increasingly close association with other living creatures, voluntarily or involuntarily. This interaction with natural reservoirs of potential infectious diseases increases the risk of zoonotic transmission of new infectious pathogens e.g., SARS, MERS-CoV, or known infectious pathogens with increased virulence e.g., influenza. Emerging infectious diseases disproportionately affect developing regions, where health infrastructure and surveillance are likely to be less well-established and robust. There were 1,307 epidemics of infectious diseases between 2011 and 2017, which cumulatively cost $60 billion annually to manage ( GHRF Commission, 2016 ). The unpredictability of outbreaks was highlighted by the Ebola epidemic in Western African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in 2014, which occurred in a period when public health was supposedly at its most advanced in recent history. However, a catalog of areas including: outbreak planning infrastructure; disease surveillance; local health services; escalation to international agencies were found to be lacking ( GHRF Commission, 2016 ). Although the WHO received criticism for its lack of escalation, in reality the global and interconnected infrastructure to prevent such epidemics taking lives and devastating societies is insufficient at the present time. The Zika virus epidemic in Latin America in 2015, first observed through an unexpectedly high incidence of microcephaly amongst newborns in Brazil’s northern regions ( Heukelbach et al., 2016 ), provide another example of how epidemics can have lasting impact, with the virus causing significant neurological damage to surviving infants ( Russo et al., 2017 ). The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic which began in 2019, was, at the time of writing, the largest infectious disease pandemic since the influenza pandemic of 1918/9. This global public health crisis highlighted stark societal inequalities persistent in many high-, middle- and low-income countries with direct and indirect impact on health outcomes from this infection. The cost-effectiveness of a vaccine in this setting was unquestionable, with economies and societies shut down for months in early 2020 and likely again in future. As it is not feasible or practical to be able to predict the location or nature of the next emerging threat, investment of an estimated $4.5 billion/year in healthcare systems could help speed up responses to infectious epidemics by prompt identification of the agent and effective control measures to limit the spread and consequences of disease ( GHRF Commission, 2016 ). The importance of this planning within the political landscape and the ongoing threat that infectious disease pose, may be appreciated more widely after 2020.

Establishing Programs for Vaccine Development

One effective infection control method is the use of vaccines in the course of an epidemic to halt transmission and to induce immunity to those as yet unaffected. The cost of vaccine development is a major challenge as there is little incentive for industry to invest in the design, testing and manufacture of vaccines that may never be needed, have a limited market, and, as previously eluded to, may be required in LMIC which cannot afford the upfront costs as an epidemic unfolds. The estimated costs for funding the development of infectious diseases vaccines for epidemics through phase 2a clinical trials are a minimum of $2.8-3.7 billion ( Gouglas et al., 2018 ). The CEPI alliance was established at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2017 as a global partnership between public, private and philanthropic organizations. In response to the conclusion that “a coordinated, international, and intergovernmental plan was needed to develop and deploy new vaccines to prevent future epidemics,” CEPI have identified the most important known global infectious threats and invested in the development of vaccines, stockpiling, and policies to allow equitable access to these ( Plotkin, 2017 ). Further, the establishment of research and development infrastructure pipelines will allow production of suitable vaccine candidates within 16 weeks of identification of a new pathogen antigen. The broader aims including: improving global epidemic responses; capacity building; and global regulation of outbreak management strategies are also within the remit of CEPI’s work. It is these types of preparedness plans that assisted vaccine development and global health collaborations to address the COVID-19 pandemic, though many regions of high-, middle-, and low-income countries alike were slow or resistant to pre-empt and prepare for this type of infectious disease threat.

Social Benefits

Equity of healthcare.

As a result of the combined effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor hygiene and sanitation, overcrowding, discrimination and poorer access to health-care, the underprivileged in society are disproportionately afflicted by infectious diseases. Over the 20th century, it has become a moral standpoint and a human right for every individual to be provided with access to safe vaccines. The provision of vaccination as part of the EPI on a national and international scale ( World Health Assembly, 1974 ) acted as a great leveler to start reducing the impact of infectious diseases to all, regardless of other disadvantages. Over the 15 years of the EPI, the vaccine coverage in developing countries increased from 5% to ∼80% ( Levine and Robins-Browne, 2009 ). The EPI was revolutionary for its time, an ambitious public health program that aimed to improve children’s life chances despite the country and situation in which they were born. The administration of vaccines by UNICEF was deemed so important that there have been at least seven ceasefires in civil conflicts to allow this to happen ( Hotez, 2001 ).

The impact of vaccines on the inequity of those living in poverty is marked. A study of over 16,000 children during the phased introduction of the measles vaccine in Bangladesh in 1982, demonstrated improved health outcome equity when measured by under-5 mortality ( Bishai et al., 2003 ). Further, modeling of the impact of the rotavirus vaccine in India across social strata, which are closely aligned to wealth, suggested that the vaccine program would provide the poor with both health and financial benefits ( Verguet et al., 2013 ). Including such equity impact in the health economic modeling of vaccines would allow policy decisions to be targeted to the most vulnerable in society ( Riumallo-Herl et al., 2018 ). Additional cost-effective benefits observed after the implementation of combined public health initiatives ( Deogaonkar et al., 2012 ; Gessner et al., 2017 ) include provision of vaccines, facilitation of healthcare, reduction of indoor air pollution and improvement of nutrition to prevent childhood pneumonia ( Niessen et al., 2009 ).

Strengthening Health and Social Care Infrastructure

To provide the EPI universally to infants and children, a significant degree of healthcare infrastructure is required ranging from primary care to public health. An example of the multiple facets of a successful vaccine program were outlined in the Mission Indradhanush in India, which planned to make life-saving vaccines available to all children and pregnant women by 2020 through programs with (i) national, (ii) state, (iii) district, and (iv) block/urban level input ( Hinman and McKinlay, 2015 ). National programs require governments to provide financial resources and set out policy for implementation. States needed to obtain the vaccines and to store them appropriately whilst eligible children were identified through public health messaging and outreach. Districts and urban areas recruited staff trained in vaccine delivery and communication to administer vaccines and to provide the aftercare where required. Establishing this degree of nationwide infrastructure to reach those in urban and rural areas, provides the basis for the provision of other health and social care services for all members of the community, in particular improving maternal and infant mortality in developing regions and in the elderly in industrialized regions ( Shearley, 1999 ). Public health infrastructure and personnel could be used to promote other important messages and health education ( Shearley, 1999 ), relating to malnutrition, hygiene and sanitation and preventable diseases such as malaria and HIV infection. Global drivers are also key, as demonstrated by the establishment of the EPI in 1974, when all countries were directed to provide these vaccines, thereby developing their primary- and public health-care infrastructure, with benefit beyond the vaccine program. Vaccination contributes to the UN Millennium Development Goals and later Sustainable Development Goals for achievement by 2030. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has been an important provider of funds, vaccines and support for countries whose gross national income per capita was <£1000/year ( Hinman and McKinlay, 2015 ). The partnerships forged through the development of vaccine programs in LMIC, can be long-lasting and beneficial through other health and social care endeavors ( Shearley, 1999 ).

Impact of Life Expectancy and Opportunity

Vaccination programs provide a degree of social mobility, as poverty and the associated ill-health and mortality from infectious diseases are no longer the determinants of one’s life chances. Vaccine recipients have the potential for improved life-expectancy largely demonstrated by, but not confined to, infants and children ( Andre et al., 2008 ). It has become increasingly recognized that an aging population goes through the process of immunosenescence ( Fulop et al., 2017 ), and increased incidence and severity of infectious diseases. In many countries, therefore, older people are offered vaccines to prevent infections with high mortality and morbidity, including the influenza, pneumococcal, herpes zoster, and pertussis vaccines ( Bonanni et al., 2015 ). These prevent the development of pneumonia, admission to hospital and the subsequent associated risks of death from cardiac failure, as observed in Sweden ( Christenson et al., 2004 ).

The global and interconnected world of the 21st century provides opportunity to discover new cultures, new environments and their resident microbes. The safety of global travel has been greatly enhanced by the availability of vaccines that provide protection against organisms that are different to those in a person’s home setting. Movement of people may be through necessity when fleeing war and conflict, in the search of better life opportunities, or for leisure purposes. For mass movements of refugees vaccines are crucial to the aid and relief efforts to support these individuals ( Hermans et al., 2017 ), as measles and cholera can be highly problematic in refugee camps. Global mass cultural or religious gatherings, such as the Hajj pilgrimage ( Yezli et al., 2018 ) or the Chinese New Year ( Chen et al., 2018 ) have been implicated in the spread of meningococcal disease outbreaks. Pre-travel vaccines offer the optimal level of protection for those with scheduled travel plans and include protection against: yellow fever, hepatitis A and B, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, tick-borne encephalitis, typhoid, and cholera.

Empowerment of Women

The empowerment of women is both a driver and effect of vaccination programs. The degree of education, literacy and independence of girls and women varies considerably across the world and within countries. Where women have the information and autonomy to make health-related decision for their children, childhood immunization rates improve. In a study in Bihar State in rural India involving an empowerment program, where participating women were educated about health and hygiene, there was a higher rate of DTP, measles and BCG vaccination in their children compared to the non-participants in the villages running the program ( Janssens, 2011 ). Further, this information and autonomy served to improve the rates of vaccination in children of non-participants in the villages running the program compared to control villages not running the education program, through social or formal ongoing dialogue within the village community. A separate public health initiative in Haryana, India conducted between 2005 and 2012 to reduce maternal and child health inequalities, involved improving access and provision of health resources to rural areas, the poor in society, women and children. One significant outcome of this initiative was the equitable provision of immunizations to girls and boys, despite the male-favored disparity prior to starting the public health initiative ( Gupta et al., 2016 ).

By improving infant and childhood mortality from infection, more children will survive to adulthood with the potential to have productive and healthy lives. This has led to healthy and economically secure women having fewer children and less peripartum morbidity and mortality ( Sah, 1991 ; Shearley, 1999 ). Thus, women are able to spend more time with their children and on their development ( Shearley, 1999 ) as well as their own education and contribution to the workforce. The strategy of maternal vaccination has demonstrated great success at preventing diseases that afflict infants too young to be vaccinated against pertussis, influenza and tetanus ( Marchant et al., 2017 ). Factors influencing the uptake of maternal vaccination include women’s previous experiences with healthcare and vaccines, so it is crucial to provide the access and support required to enable them to make informed choices during their pregnancy ( Wilson et al., 2019 ).

The impact of vaccines is broad and far-reaching, though not consistently quantifiable, analyzed or communicated. Traditionally, the perceived benefits of vaccination were to reduce morbidity and mortality from infections, and those remain the drivers for the innovation of new vaccines, in particular in preparation for outbreaks or against infections that afflict the most disadvantaged in society. However, an increasing appreciation for the economic and social effects of vaccines is being included in the development and assessment of vaccine programs, potentially realizing a greater benefit to society and resulting in wider implementation. There remain challenges to delivering vaccines to all children and vulnerable people worldwide, in particular those in communities that are difficult to reach geographically, politically and culturally and these challenges can only be overcome with the continued commitment and dedication to this endeavor on an international, national and individual scale.

Author Contributions

SP conceptualized and designed the study. CR prepared the manuscript and figures. CR and SP contributed to literature search and revision and review of the final manuscript. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

SP consults for many major vaccine manufacturers and biotechnology companies but this article was unfunded.

The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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The Importance of Vaccinations
A vaccine (or immunization) is a way to build your body's natural immunity to a disease before you get sick. This keeps you from getting and spreading the disease. For some vaccines, a weakened form of the disease germ is injected into your body. This is usually done with a shot in the leg or arm.
Importance Of Vaccination Essay
Importance Of Vaccination Essay. A vaccination is a treatment that increases immunity to a specific illness. It is a biologically produced item that includes typical components resembling a disease-causing bacteria, generated from weak or dead versions of the microbe. It aids in immune system stimulation, identifies invasive bacteria as foreign ...
Why it's safe and important to get the COVID-19 vaccine
The COVID-19 vaccination will help keep you from getting the virus. COVID-19 vaccines were evaluated in clinical trials and have been approved because those studies show that the vaccine significantly reduces the probability of contracting the virus. Based on what has been proved about vaccines for other diseases, the COVID-19 vaccine may help ...
Vaccines and immunization: What is vaccination?
All the ingredients of a vaccine play an important role in ensuring a vaccine is safe and effective. Some of these include: The antigen. This is a killed or weakened form of a virus or bacteria, which trains our bodies to recognize and fight the disease if we encounter it in the future. Adjuvants, which help to boost our immune response.
What you need to know about COVID-19 vaccines
العربية. 25 October 2022. Vaccines save millions of lives each year. The development of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are a crucial step in helping us get back to doing more of the things we enjoy with the people we love. We've gathered the latest expert information to answer some of the most common questions about COVID-19 ...
Benefits of Getting A COVID-19 Vaccine
There are many benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
The Importance of Global COVID-19 Vaccination
Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report: APA. Moore, Sarah. (2022, January 17). The Importance of Global COVID-19 Vaccination.
Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine
For some COVID-19 vaccines, two doses are required . It's important to get the second dose if the vaccine requires two doses. For vaccines that require two doses, the first dose presents antigens - proteins that stimulate the production of antibodies - to the immune system for the first time. Scientists call this priming the immune response.
Why vaccination is important and the safest way to protect yourself
Vaccines do. help to protect you and your child from many serious and potentially deadly diseases. protect other people in your family and community - by helping to stop diseases spreading to people who cannot have vaccines, such as babies too young to be vaccinated and those who are too ill to be vaccinated.
Vaccines Are Important—But What Are They and How Do They Work?
The fastest vaccine ever successfully developed—a mumps vaccine produced by Merck in the 1960s—still required four years. Several vaccines against COVID-19, however, were developed and completed clinical trials in record time—in some cases, in less than a year. But experts like Iwasaki do not see this as cause for alarm. "The vaccine ...
Importance of Vaccines: Resources & Information
Importance of Vaccines: Resources & Information. For more than 50 years, vaccinations have saved more than a billion lives and prevented countless illnesses and disabilities in the United States. Vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, COVID-19, influenza, and whooping cough, are still a threat.
The Importance of Vaccination in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has led the world to undertake the largest vaccination campaign in human history. In record time, unprecedented scientific and governmental efforts have resulted in the acquisition of immunizers utilizing different technologies (nucleotide acids, viral vectors, inactivated and protein-based vaccines).
The Importance of Getting Fully Vaccinated
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C.'s director, said that there's an almost 20-fold increased risk of transmitting the virus indoors. Even for vaccinated people, she said, "until more people ...
The vaccines success story gives us hope for the future
Today, 86% of the world's children receive essential, lifesaving vaccines, increasing from around 20% back in 1980. This protects them and their communities against a range of infectious diseases, including measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B and polio. The number of children paralysed by polio has been ...
Why vaccines matter: understanding the broader health, economic, and
Economic, equity, and global health benefits of vaccines. Vaccines can have several economic benefits. 3, 10 One of the most discernible benefits is averted medical expenditure. By preventing an episode of the disease through a vaccine, the economic costs of treatment, such as physician fees, drugs and hospitalization expenses, and associated travel costs and wage loss of caregivers could be ...
essay on importance of Vaccination
Vaccines will involve some discomfort and may cause pain, redness, or tenderness at the site of injection but this is minimal compared to the pain, discomfort, and trauma of the diseases these vaccines prevent. Serious side effects following vaccination, such as severe allergic reaction, are very rare. The disease-prevention benefits of getting ...
Simply put: Vaccination saves lives
A recent economic analysis of 10 vaccines for 94 low- and middle-income countries estimated that an investment of $34 billion for the immunization programs resulted in savings of $586 billion in reducing costs of illness and $1.53 trillion when broader economic benefits were included ( 5 ). The only human disease ever eradicated, smallpox, was ...
Persuasive Essay About Covid19
Different sides argue about the benefits or dangers of the new vaccines. Whatever your point of view is, writing a persuasive essay about it is a good way of organizing your thoughts and persuading others. A persuasive essay about the Covid-19 vaccine could consider the benefits of getting vaccinated as well as the potential side effects.
A Vaccine a Day to Keep the Doctor Away: A Research Essay on Vaccinations
An additional aspect of vaccines many parents are troubled with is the increase in suggested vaccines for young children. "Today, the CDC recommends that children receive vaccines for 10 diseases — plus the flu vaccine — by age 6, which can mean up to 37 separate shots. That compares to five vaccines for the same age group in 1995 ...
The importance and benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19
COVID-19 vaccines have undergone, and will continue to undergo, the most intensive safety monitoring in history.. Vaccination around the world. Worldwide, more than 3.19 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine have been administered so far, according to figures compiled by Our World in Data. According to these figures, almost 27% of the world's ...
What is the importance of vaccination
vaccinations are an important part of family and public health. Vaccines prevent the spread of contagious, dangerous, and deadly diseases. These include measles, polio, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and HPV. The first vaccine discovered was the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox was a deadly illness.
Impact of Vaccines; Health, Economic and Social Perspectives
Introduction "The impact of vaccination on the health of the world's peoples is hard to exaggerate. With the exception of safe water, no other modality has had such a major effect on mortality reduction and population growth" (Plotkin and Mortimer, 1988).The development of safe and efficacious vaccination against diseases that cause substantial morbidity and mortality has been one of the ...
Write an informative essay about the importance of COVID-19 ...
Write an informative essay about the importance of COVID-19 vaccine. - 25442430 ... Advertisement pascualmatt89 pascualmatt89 Answer: covid 19 vaccine is very important to our body because it can prevent us from having a covid 19 virus into our body, but some people think that covid 19 vaccine is harmful because they believe that covid 19 is ...
Influenza Health Worker Vaccination Programmes: Platforms for Pandemic
Vaccination is provided to both day and night shifts to enable access for all HWs.Pandemic preparedness: In Thailand, using existing influenza vaccine management strategies and structures enabled the country to quickly reach high coverage rates for COVID-19 vaccination as soon as the COVID-19 vaccine supply was sufficient.References [i].

Intermittent Fasting

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)

Related Topics

What are vaccines?

How does immunity work?

Path to improved health

Is there anyone who can’t get vaccines?

Are there side effects to vaccines?

What would happen if we stopped vaccinating children and adults?

Things to consider

Vaccines do NOT cause autism.

Vaccines are NOT too much for an infant’s immune system to handle.

Vaccines do NOT contain toxins that will harm you.

Vaccines do NOT cause the diseases they are meant to prevent.

We DO still need vaccines in the U.S., even though infection rates are low.

Questions to ask your doctor

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Do I need to get a booster shot?  

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