COVID19 Vaccine How do vaccines work

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What you need to know about how vaccines work 

Vaccines are very effective and save millions of lives around the world every year. Vaccines protect people by providing immunity from many serious diseases such as hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, rubella, tuberculosis and seasonal influenza.
Vaccines contain weakened or inactive parts of a particular organism that stimulate an immune response within the body. Vaccines help to develop immunity by imitating an infection. This type of infection doesn’t cause illness, but it does cause the immune system to produce antibodies.
Sometimes, after getting a vaccine, the imitation infection can cause minor symptoms, such as fever. Such minor symptoms are normal and should be expected as the body builds immunity.
It typically takes a few weeks for the body to produce antibodies after vaccination. Therefore, it is possible that a person could be infected with the disease just after vaccination and then get sick because the vaccine did not have enough time to provide protection.
Some vaccines, including most of the COVID-19 vaccines currently being tested, require more than one shot of the vaccine to provide strong immunity.
The term ‘herd immunity’ is often used when describing the way in which vaccines work. Herd immunity occurs when enough of the population (typically around 70 percent) become immune to a disease. This is because it greatly reduces the ability of the virus to spread from person to person to any significant degree.
Vaccination not only protects the person receiving the vaccine, but also other people around them as it reduces the risk of transfer. For this reason, even people at low risk of serious complications due to certain diseases – including COVID-19 – should get vaccinated to protect their family and friends.