Diseases & Conditions
Will there be a COVID-19 vaccine?
Ask the doctor
There are many different ways to produce a vaccine. All are being tried simultaneously, since we can't predict which will work best. Vaccines typically include a killed or weakened virus, or a protein from the virus. When the vaccine enters the body, the immune system "sees" and remembers it. Then, if the real virus enters the body later in life, the primed immune system attacks and eradicates it. Growing the large amounts of virus needed for a vaccine, or making the virus's proteins in a laboratory, takes a lot of time and money. So, faster and cheaper approaches have been developed.
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