COVID-19 – How Vaccines Work and a Search for the Answer

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This animation explains how vaccines work within the body. When antigens, any substance that is perceived as dangerous, enters the body, an immune response is triggered causing a recognition of the foreign invader, activation of defense cells, destruction of the antigen, and creation of memory cells for future use. Components involved in the immune response include white blood cell such as T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes, macrophages, and antibodies. B-lymphocytes produce proteins specific to each antigen called antibodies. Antibodies bind to invading antigens tagging them as an invader to be destroyed by the T-lymphocytes and then eliminated by the macrophages. Even after the body has removed the threat of infection, a few immune cells are retained as memory cells to quickly attack if the same antigen is encountered. When the body encounters potentially lethal antigens such as Ebola, influenza, or COVID-19 the immune response that usually takes a few days, can be too long with a fatal outcome for the infected individual. Vaccines offer a solution to this problem by utilizing a weakened or dead version of the antigen allowing the body to produce antibodies and memory cells that can quickly jump into action to destroy the actual antigen when encountered by the body. The development of vaccines is an extremely long and complex process often taking ten to fifteen years and including identification of various antigens from the virus, production of the vaccine, extensive testing, verification, and trials to gather data about the effectiveness of the vaccine. In the case of COVID-19, governments from around the world have worked to remove many of the traditional production regulations streamlining the process and hoping to reduce development time to between twelve and eighteen months with hope from many companies for the release of a vaccine by early 2021.

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