COVID-19 vaccine tracker: What’s the progress? – DW (English)

There are more than 50 clinical trials worldwide testing potential vaccines, known as candidates, against COVID-19. So far, two of the vaccine candidates have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use.

The majority of vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are still in a preclinical phase. That means the candidate vaccines are being tested in animal experiments, for example, rather than with human patients.

Please note:To be displayed as approved in the chart, a vaccine needs to be either approved by the USFDA or the European Medicines Agency(EMA), or cleared for emergency use by FDA, EMA orWHO. More details can be found here.

When those tests are deemed successful, candidate vaccines can move into clinical trial phases. That's when they are tested with humans. There are three clinical trial phases for efficacy and safety before a vaccine can be approved for use by humans. The phases differ from each other, most significantly in their scale:

Some companies, such asBioNTech-Pfizerin Europe, and Sinovac in China, have tested their vaccine candidates in several trials in parallel. For example, they have tested the same vaccine but in different age groups or with different dosages.

If clinical trials are successful, a company can formally apply to regulatory bodies to have their vaccine approved for use by the general public.

Three regulatory authorities are considered to be particularly important in this context: The FDAin the US, the Europea EMA,and the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Device Agency in Japan.

When a vaccine is approved, it doesn't mean everybody can get it immediately.

First, the vaccine has to be produced on a mass scale. With COVID-19, manufacturers aim to produce billions of doses by the end of 2021.

Second, logistics experts have to ensure appropriate distribution of the vaccine, and political leaders haveto decide who gets the vaccine first.

Read more: Can a vaccine be given out fairly?

In the end, though, it will be up to each individual to decide. A survey of more than 13,000 people in 35 countries most affected by COVID-19 showed that the majority of people asked would choose to get vaccinated.

It can take several years to develop an effective and safe vaccine. On average, it takes between 10 and 12 years, but it can take longer. The search for a vaccine against HIV has been going since the early 1980s so farwithout success.

In the case of COVID-19, researchers are racing to shorten the time it usually takes because of the ongoing pandemic. Despite the pressure that that brings, vaccine developers, manufacturers and the World Health Organization (WHO) say there will be no compromises on safety.

Research teams are aiming to accelerate, or limit, the time it takes to get to approval during the pandemic to an average duration of 16 months.

However, that will only be the beginning. Once clinical trials are successfully completedand a vaccine is approved and produced, researchers start phase IV, during which they observe the progress of vaccinated patients.

Researchers are pursuing 12different approaches for vaccines against COVID-19.

Most of the vaccine candidates use a protein-based subunit so, instead of using a complete pathogenic virus, they are built on a small component of it, such as a protein found in its outer shell.

That protein is administered to patients in a high dose, with the aim of inducing a fast and strong reaction by the human immune system.

The hope is that the immune system will "remember" the protein and trigger a similar defense reaction if or when it comes into contact with the actual virus.

Vaccines against hepatitis B and HPV (human papillomavirus), for example, are based on this principle.

Four additional approaches have made it to phase III.

Non-replicating viral vectors are a type of so-called recombinant vaccines: Researchers modify the virus' genetic information by switching on or off or altering certain functions. By doing that they can, for example, reduce the infectiousness of a virus. Such genetic modifications, however, require that science already has detailed knowledge about which parts of a virus' genetic material are responsible for which functions in order for them to be able to manipulate them effectively. The term "non-replicating" means that the virus in the vaccine enters cells in the human body but is unable to reproduce there on its own.

Inactivated vaccines use a "dead" version of the pathogen. They tend to provide a lower level of protection than live vaccines. Some vaccines in this class have to be administered several times to achieve sufficient immunity. Examples of inactivated vaccines include ones against influenza and hepatitis A.

RNA vaccines follow a different strategy, without using any "real" component of the virus at all. Instead, researchers aim to trick the human body into producing a specific virus component on its own. Since only this specific component is built, no complete virus can assemble itself. Nevertheless, the immune system learns to recognize the non-human components and trigger a defense reaction.

Vaccines based on virus-like particles use another approach: Researchers only use the empty virus envelope without any genetic material inside of it to train the immune system.

At time of writing, there were well over 100 research teams worldwidedeveloping a COVID-19 vaccine. So far, 15 teams have advanced their candidate vaccines to the third phase of clinical trials.

Five teams stand out for conducting the most extensive clinical trials:

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COVID-19 vaccine tracker: What's the progress? - DW (English)