What types of COVID-19 vaccines are being developed? How would they work?

Scientists are developing many potential vaccines for COVID-19, all designed to teach the body’s immune system to safely recognize and block the virus that causes COVID-19. Different types of vaccines include:

• Inactivated or weakened virus vaccines, which use a form of the virus that doesn’t cause disease, but still prompts an immune response

• Protein-based vaccines, which a coronavirus protein or protein fragment to safely prompt an immune response

• Viral vector vaccines, which use a virus that has been engineered so it can’t cause disease, but produces coronavirus proteins to safely prompt an immune response

RNA and DNA vaccines, a new approach that provides “instructions” for cells to build a protein that safely prompts an immune response