The development of COVID-19 vaccine candidates has been very rapid Only ten months after the etiological agent was identified, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, 151 products are in preclinical development, 33 candidate vaccines are in phase 1-2 of clinical trials, and 10 are already in phase 3 efficacy trials A wide variety of vaccine platforms, both classical and advanced, have been used for the development of these candidate vaccines, most of them expressing the S protein of the spike Experiments on non-human primates have shown that the vaccine candidates are safe, immunogenic and can protect monkeys from a viral challenge Similarly, phase 1-2 clinical trials confirm that vaccine candidates are safe and induce neutralizing antibodies The phase 3 trials that are being carried out will allow to know more about the safety of those vaccine candidates, as well as their protective efficacy against infection or disease In anticipation of these results, the world is preparing to produce and distribute large quantities of the vaccines that prove to be safe and effective, something that could happen in the last months of 2020 or more likely in 2021 In fact, after completing the preparation of this article, in early November 2020 the preliminary results from the phase 3 trials of three candidate vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech/Fosum, Gamaleya/Sputnik V and Moderna) were announced in the media, indicating that the three are highly effective, creating a high expectation regarding the potential role that vaccines will play in the future control of the COVID-19 pandemic
Vaccines against the COVID-19: progress and expectations