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Now that the Food and Drug Administration has approved two COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use authorization, many states have begun administering��injections to frontline healthcare workers and some of the country’s most vulnerable patients.��

“We are truly experiencing history in the making,”��says��Augustine M. K. Choi,��MD, the��Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean, �ձ�avɫ��Ƭ��(WCM), and��provost for Medical Affairs, Cornell University.��At WCM, Dean Choi adds, “Workers��are��already getting��the��vaccine,��and��the general public will get it in the months and weeks to come.”��

Dean Choi��and��Roy Gulick,��MD, MPH,��chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases,��recently discussed the vaccine, how it works,��and its administration��in an��. Here are the��five key takeaways from the webinar that you should know.

The��new��mRNA-based vaccines cannot��give you��the virus that causes COVID-19.

That’s because the injection only contains “a tiny sliver of the genes of the virus called RNA,” Dr. Gulick explains.��“We’re not using all the genes from the virus….So��you could not get it from receiving the vaccine.”��

Then the vaccine is injected into the muscle of the upper arm,��and��“The muscle cells take up that RNA and use it as a template to make the spike protein of the Corona virus….�ճ����thinking goes that if you ever come into contact with the real virus, your immune system is already primed to do it.”��

These are effective vaccines.

When the FDA was advising drug companies on the design of the vaccines, they said they were looking for them to be about 50% effective.��

“What we learned from the clinical trials is each of the vaccines is approximately 95% effective,” Dr. Gulick explains. “That’s as good as any other vaccine. We have the measles vaccine, for example, which is about 90% effective.”��

Though the approved vaccines have not been studied in comparison with one another, “They both look like excellent vaccines,” Dr. Gulick��says.��

The approved vaccines come in two doses.��The first injection, Dr. Gulick says, “primes the immune system.”��

That’s��“somewhat helpful,’ he says,��perhaps��offering patients��up to approximately 50% protection. “But to achieve that 95% protection, you really do need that second shot to make sure that the immune system is fully primed to make a response.”��

The��two��Pfizer vaccine injections are separated by three weeks, and the��Moderna��injections are given four weeks apart.��

There��can be��side effects, and that’s a good thing.

Side effects are,��“telling us is that the immune system is responding to the vaccine,” he says.��“It’s already recognizing it as a foreign protein that needs to be dealt with.”��

The most common side effects have been��local pain or soreness at the site of the injection.��Though rare,��some patients have experienced��redness or swelling at that site��and, some��have��experienced fatigue, headache, or��muscle or joint aches.��

We don’t yet have��all��of the information about who should receive the vaccine.

Some��groups of people��simply have not yet been studied, Dr. Gulick says.��

In addition to people who may��be��allergic to a component of the injections,��pregnant or breastfeeding women;��children under the age of 16;��those��with��compromised immune systems, such as patients with cancer, transplanted organs, or uncontrolled HIV infections��have not yet been included in clinical trials.��

Dr. Gulick adds: “People really should have conversations with their own doctors before they receive the vaccine if they’re in those specific groups.”����

Watch the full COVID-19 vaccine Q&A session below.