The COVID Vaccine: How It Works and What’s Next

All COVID-19 vaccines have one thing in common: they use various methods of biomedical trickery to coax our immune system into producing antibodies that neutralize an invading virus. But as these vaccines become increasingly available, new variants of the virus are spreading. The question now facing immunologists and other researchers is whether the immune system — having been conditioned to knock out today’s COVID-19 virus — will be able to take out tomorrow’s mutated versions. How long can the vaccine protect us against current and future strains? Can other parts of our immune system — beyond antibodies — be coaxed by the vaccines to fight the virus and its variants? Join internationally renowned immunologist Dr. Miriam Merad, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and award-winning New York Times health and science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, for an in-depth discussion of how our immune system responds to intruders like the COVID-19 virus, with the latest news on emerging strains.