What to know
There are many benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
COVID-19 vaccines protect your health
COVID 19-vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. Vaccination remains the safest strategy for avoiding hospitalizations, long-term health outcomes, and death.
- Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
- A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
- Offers added protection: COVID-19 vaccines can offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection.
How to be best protected: As with vaccines for other diseases, people are best protected when they stay up to date.
What you can do now to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death
Use Vaccines.gov – to find a COVID-19 vaccine near you.
CDC recommends everyone aged 5 years and older get 1 updated COVID-19 vaccine. Children aged 6 months – 4 years may need more than 1 dose of updated COVID-19 to stay up to date. People aged 65 years and older who received 1 dose of any updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) should receive 1 additional dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months after the previous updated dose. For more Novavax information, click or tap here.
Severe illness
COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing the most severe outcomes from a COVID-19 infection.
Myocarditis is a condition where the heart becomes inflamed in response to an infection or some other trigger. Myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination is rare. This study shows that patients with COVID-19 had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19.
Hospitalization
COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent you from becoming hospitalized if you do get infected with COVID-19.
Death
COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent you from dying if you do get infected with COVID-19.
COVID-19 vaccination is a safer, more reliable way to build protection
Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine Is Safer and More Reliable
Getting Sick
- Getting sick with COVID-19 can cause severe illness or death, even in children, but it is not possible to determine who will experience mild or severe illness from COVID-19 infection.
- People may have long-term health issues after having COVID-19. Even people who do not have symptoms when they are first infected with COVID-19 can experience long-term health problems, also known as long COVID or post-COVID conditions.
- Complications can appear after mild or severe COVID-19, or after multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
Protection from COVID-19
While people can get some protection from having COVID-19, the level and length of that protection varies, especially as COVID-19 variants continue to emerge.
- Immunity (protection) from infection can vary depending on how mild or severe someone’s illness was and their age.
- Immunity from infection decreases over time.
Importantly, there is no antibody test available that can reliably determine if a person is protected from further infection.