The COVID-19 vaccines protect people from getting infected and severely ill, and significantly reduce the likelihood of hospitalization and death. Vaccines still offer significant protection against many of the new variants, but it may not be as good as the protection for the earlier variants of the virus. The best way to slow the emergence of new variants is to reduce the spread of infection by taking measures to protect yourself, including getting a COVID-19 vaccine when available. For more information on COVID-19 variants, please visit https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/transmission/variant.html.