COVID-19 Vaccine Facts (2024)

COVID-19 can cause severe illness or death. You can also continue to have long-term health issues after COVID-19 infection. Getting sick with COVID-19 offers protection from future illness. This protection is sometimes called “natural immunity”. The level of protection people get from a COVID-19 infection may vary depending on how mild or severe their illness was, the time since their infection, and their age.

Getting a COVID-19 vaccine can provide added protection for people who already had COVID-19.

Learn about why you should get vaccinated even if you already had COVID-19.

None of the COVID-19 vaccines contain ingredients like preservatives, tissues (such as aborted fetal cells), antibiotics, food proteins, medicines, latex, or metals. Exact vaccine ingredients vary by manufacturer.

Learn more about what ingredients are and are notin Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccines do not create or cause variants of the virus that causes COVID-19. As the COVID-19 virus spreads, it has more opportunities to change.

Learn more aboutvariants.

Vaccines work by stimulating your immune system to produce antibodies. After getting vaccinated, you develop immunity to that disease, without having to get the disease first.

COVID-19 vaccines are not administered to track your movement. They are free from manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors.

COVID-19 vaccines are free from metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth alloys. They do not contain ingredients that can produce an electromagnetic field at the site of your injection.

Learn more about the ingredientsin the COVID-19 vaccinations authorized for use in the United States.

COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for people who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future, as well as their partners.

Learn more about COVID-19 vaccines and people who would like to have a baby.

Both messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein subunitCOVID-19 vaccines work by delivering instructions (genetic material) to your cells to start building protection against the virus that causes COVID-19.

After the body produces an immune response, it gets rid of all the vaccine ingredients just as it would get rid of any information that cells no longer need. This process is a part of normal body functioning.

The genetic material delivered by mRNA vaccines never enters the nucleus of your cells, which is where your DNA is kept, so the vaccine does not alter your DNA.

Learn more about how COVID-19 vaccines work.

Some VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Vaccine safety experts study these adverse events and look for unusually high numbers of health problems, or a pattern of problems, after people receive a particular vaccine.

The number of deaths reported to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccination has been misinterpreted and misreported as if this number means deaths that were proven to be caused by vaccination. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.

Learn more about VAERS.

None of the COVID-19 vaccines recommended for use in the U.S. contain a live virus. mRNA and protein subunit vaccines are the two types of currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines available in the U.S.

Learn more about mRNA and​ protein subunit COVID-19 vaccines.