Vaccines reduce the risks of getting a disease by working with your body’s natural defenses to build protection. When you get a vaccine, your immune system responds to it:

• Recognizes the invading germ, such as the virus or bacteria.
• Produces antibodies. Antibodies are proteins produced naturally by the immune system to fight disease.
• Remembers the disease and how to fight it. If you are then exposed to the germ in the future, your immune system can quickly destroy it before you become unwell.

The vaccine is therefore a safe and clever way to produce an immune response in the body, without causing illness, our immune systems are designed to remember. Once exposed to one or more doses of a vaccine, we typically remain protected against a disease for years, decades or even a lifetime. This is what makes vaccines so effective. Rather than treating a disease after it occurs, vaccines prevent us in the first instance from getting sick.

The COVID-19 vaccine is given through an injection in the upper arm muscle. Some COVID-19 vaccines are single-dose while others are given in two doses three to four weeks apart.

No, there are different type of germs that cause infection, and vaccines are made accordingly. For example, disease like tuberculosis, tetanus, pneumonia, meningitis, and diptheria are caused by bacteria, vaccines for available for these work against respective bacteria, Measles, hepatitis, chicken pox, influenze, and now COVID-19 are viral diseases, with vaccines available. A vaccine against malaria, which is caused by another type of germ (plasmodium) is under development.

No such obligation is under consideration at this point in time.