With the COVID-19 vaccines rolling out across the country and more people getting vaccinated, many are wondering how long it takes for the vaccines to provide protection.

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout is underway, bringing a sense of hope — as well as many questions about safety and who should get the vaccine. To help answer these questions, NewYork-Presbyterian experts address common concerns about the new Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines and explain why they are safe.

As the coronavirus vaccine rolls out across the country, an infectious disease expert answers questions about its safety and when it’s likely to be available to the general public.

Dr. Kristen Marks, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine and associate attending physician at the medical center, leads the team conducting Moderna Therapeutics’s phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center—one of dozens of medical centers around the U.S. where this still-experimental vaccine will be tested.

As doctors face the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 with a very limited arsenal of treatments, physicians at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian have rapidly mobilized to test candidate drugs in clinical trials.