4 Facts: How Vaccines Save Lives

COVID-19 vaccines have prevented as many as 1 million deaths and 10 million hospitalizations  — but they also raise a lot of questions.

How do they work? How effective are they? Is there enough supply? Vaccine-related headlines dominate the news. But navigating what’s fact and what’s fiction is crucial to ensure we stay safe and protect those around us.

Here are four facts to better understand vaccines, mRNA technology, and vaccine equity.

Fact 1: Unlike traditional vaccines, mRNA vaccines do not contain any live virus. Instead, they teach cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response.

Unlike traditional vaccines, which introduce a small part of the virus to the body, mRNA vaccines teach our cells how to make a spike protein that’s found on the surface of the virus. In both cases, an immune response is activated in which antibodies are produced to protect us against future infection.

Though they are newly available to the public, researchers have been studying and working with mRNA vaccines for decades. The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines prove the technology is safe and effective and mark an incredible advance in global health.  The use of mRNAs will revolutionize the world of vaccine development, as these vaccines can be produced much faster and in larger quantities.

Fact 2: As of January 2022, nearly 7 in 10 people in high-income countries had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In low-income countries, only 1 in 9 people had received one dose.

Low-income countries started vaccinating citizens on average two months after high-income countries, and the difference in coverage is striking.

Despite ample global supply, access to vaccines in low-income countries remains alarmingly low, and the risks higher. Only 11% of people have been vaccinated with at least one dose as of mid-January. In high-income countries, 67% of people had received one dose.

Fact 3: Every month, 1.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses are produced. This is enough supply to vaccinate 70% of the population of every country by the middle of this year, provided doses are distributed equitably.

The COVID-19 vaccines are the fastest vaccines to ever be developed and distributed, and global vaccination production is at an all-time high. Last year, 11.2 billion doses were produced. If production continues at its current rate of 1.5 billion doses a month, there will be 19.8 billion total vaccine doses produced by the middle of 2022. That’s 2.5 doses for every person in the world, if supply was distributed equally.

Fact 4: Lab tests show that those who received a booster shot were as much as 25 times more protected against the omicron variant.

People with a third booster dose are at lower risk of becoming infected with the omicron variant, and those who do contract the new strain are experiencing milder symptoms than unvaccinated patients.

Preliminary data show vaccines have been 30%-40% effective at preventing infections (70% effective in protecting against severe disease), while a booster shot “increased by 25-fold people’s levels of virus-fighting antibodies.” The third dose has been estimated to be 70-75% effective in strengthening immune response and protection against the variant thus far.