Do you have COVID-19 questions? Our scientists have answers.
No, none of the vaccines that will be made available in the US to prevent the spread of COVID-19 will affect a person’s DNA or genetic makeup. You may hear that two of the vaccines, one by Pfizer/BioNTech and the other by Moderna, use something called messenger RNA (mRNA), which causes your cells to make a small piece of the virus that won’t make you sick, to help protect people from getting COVID-19, but it does not change a person’s DNA or alter their genetic make-up.
18 December 2020