Understanding the different types of COVID-19 vaccine for dummies — Part 2
The first part of this post was a general overview of the different types of COVID-19 vaccines available at the moment, what they contain, and how they help to strengthen the body’s defence system in readiness for a future COVID contact or infection. I made an interesting comparison between the COVID vaccine and an item purchased from an online store. Check out the first article here.
Building on the foundation established in the previous post, we will examine the other types in this article — the protein subunit vaccines and inactivated virus vaccines. I will also explain why we feel some certain symptoms after receiving the vaccine.
Inactivated virus vaccine types (CoronaVac (China), Covaxin (India))
As you might have guessed from the name, these contain coronavirus particles that have been killed or made inactive. By doing this, they can no longer cause illness, but can still activate our body’s immune response — “they can bark, but cannot bite”.
These types of vaccines have been in use before the pandemic and a common example is the Influenza vaccine (“the flu jab”).
Protein subunit vaccines (EpiVacCorona)
Remember the spike protein analysis from the first article? These vaccine types work by injecting these spike protein particles directly into the body. These proteins are usually found on the surface of the coronavirus, but they have been taken out. It involves “purifying just one component of the virus from everything else”. By the way, who needs the whole virus or something else when you can just have the protein?
There are other vaccine types still in different phases of clinical trial, but I have chosen not to be bore you with those ones for now, because I think we’ve had enough medical jargon for one post.
As we have seen, the role of these vaccines is to give the body a feeling of the presence of an “intruder”, whether by encoding a message in the mRNA or injecting the spike protein directly. This intruder triggers our body’s defensive (immune) response by activating the existing system and producing more cells and antibodies that stay within the blood for a long time, and are ready to combat any future intruder that are of that particular type. This is the basic science behind every vaccine.
The symptoms we feel which are often similar to that of the real coronavirus infection is a sign of our body getting battle-ready, the defensive apparatus swinging into action to fight the supposed intruder.
Thanks for enduring the pain of reading this boring post till the end. I can only hope you had as much fun as I had writing this.
