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Review
. 2021 Aug 14;10(8):1030.
doi: 10.3390/pathogens10081030.

An Overview of Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Affiliations
Review

An Overview of Vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in the COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Alejandro Pascual-Iglesias et al. Pathogens. .

Abstract

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 led to the COVID-19 pandemic all over the world. When the virus was first isolated and its genome was sequenced in the early months of 2020, the efforts to develop a vaccine began. Based on prior well-known knowledge about coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein was selected as the main target. Currently, more than one hundred vaccines are being investigated and several of them are already authorized by medical agencies. This review summarizes and compares the current knowledge about main approaches for vaccine development, focusing on those authorized and specifically their immunogenicity, efficacy preventing severe disease, adverse side effects, protection, and ability to cope with emergent SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; clinical trial; coronavirus; pandemic; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Recently emerging diseases vaccine and development timeline. (A) Date indicates the first major outbreak, (green) time to the first Phase I Clinical Trial. (Wine) indicates the time to get an approved or authorized Ebola and COVID-19 vaccine. (B) Comparison of traditional vaccine timeline for infectious diseases versus COVID-19 vaccine timeline.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration showing the several types of vaccine approaches currently being developed for COVID-19 disease.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The COVID-19 candidate vaccine landscape. (A) Vaccines developed in preclinical and clinical phases vs vaccine platforms. (B) Vaccines candidates in the clinical phase. Based on WHO data [49].

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