COVID-19 Vaccines: A Brief Review

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019 was a defining moment in medical history that pushed the world into a state of uncertainty and fear. The virus was a new one, its effects on the human body were severe and its evergrowing spread across the globe soon became a major concern for everyone, drawing an extraordinary response from the scientific community, doctors, health workers and governments. The research was conducted on the structure and physiology of the virus as well as the human immune response to the virus, along with the development of testing, therapeutics, and vaccines occurring on an unprecedentedly short timescale. With support from governments and pharmaceutical companies, within a year of the worldwide outbreak of the disease, numerous vaccine candidates had emerged, and to date, eight World Health Organization-approved vaccines are being used on an emergency basis. In this concise review, the different types of vaccines have been described, along with the characteristics of the leading vaccines and a detailed discussion of the vaccines being used in India.

Keywords: Adenovirus, Adjuvant, Antibodies, Antigen, Approval, Attenuated, Covaxin, COVID-19, Covishield, Efficacy, Immune-response, Inactivated, mRNA, Pandemic, Pharmaceutical, Spike-protein, Sputnik-V, Vaccine, Viralvector, Virus.