The Different Types of Covid-19 Vaccines, Explained

How different companies are approaching the development of a new Covid-19 vaccine

kmeverson
Medium Coronavirus Blog
5 min readDec 7, 2020

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In the 1760s — as smallpox was killing nearly 400,000 Europeans each year — a strange rumor started to spread: Dairy workers never seemed to contract smallpox.

This rumor reached a surgeon’s apprentice named Edward Jenner, who recognized that dairy workers had already been exposed to a similar virus called cowpox. Jenner started to inoculate children with cowpox, and the world’s first vaccination was born.

The principle behind Jenner’s approach — using a weaker version of a virus to create immunity to the more deadly version — is still used in some vaccines. But today there are many other methods for vaccine production, and these are being used to create new Covid-19 vaccines in record time.

Vaccine type #1: Live attenuated

The word “attenuated” means “reduced in force” or “weakened.” So, live attenuated vaccines contain an active but weakened version of the virus (this is similar to the idea used in the first smallpox vaccines).

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Medium Coronavirus Blog
Medium Coronavirus Blog

Published in Medium Coronavirus Blog

A former blog from Medium for Covid-19 news, advice, and commentary. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

kmeverson
kmeverson

Written by kmeverson

Biology postdoc by day, graphic designer by night. Creator of “Data Worth Seeing.”

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