Both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine use a relatively new technology that has been approved for the first time: mRNA vaccines. (The Oxford vaccine instead uses genetic material from what’s known as an adenovirus derived from chimpanzees.)Īrm yourself with more details about the Oxford vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. Fortunately, they haven’t all been bad: the virus led to the remarkable development of vaccines at a pace and scale the likes of which have never before been seen in history. COVID-19 has set off many unprecedented events that will most likely change the world forever.