Top 10 Covid-19 vaccines under development

December will mark one year since the first recorded cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) (Huang et al., 2020). Since then, the respiratory illness has reached almost 45 million cases and caused the death of almost 1.2 million people, with approximately 10.9 million current active cases, globally (worldometer, 2020).

As well as the incredibly high rates of infection and mortality, Covid-19 has caused lockdowns and the implementation of tight restrictions across the world. This has led to some of the highest economic downturns in many years, large unemployment rates (Jones et al., 2020), and damaging impacts on other areas of people’s lives, such as mental health (Collinson, 2020).

The enormous scale of the infectious disease has created an urgent demand for a vaccine. In addition to controlling the spread of the disease, a vaccine will have widespread economic effects. It has been reported that once a vaccine is introduced, it will prevent the loss of US$375 billion per month within the global economy (WHO, 2020a).

Unlike many other industries, biopharmaceutical (biopharma) companies have seen an enormous increase in their share prices. For example, in just over one month (January 20-February 25, 2020), before much of the public were even aware of the severity of the disease, biopharma company Novacyt’s share prices were up 799%, and Co-Diagnostics were up 296% (Mikulic, 2020).

Clinical Trials

When a medicine is developed, it must be regulated by passing a set of clinical trials of which each phase must be passed in order to continue on to the next one.

Phase 1:

The new medicine is tested on a group of healthy individuals in order to: 1) ensure that there are no major safety concerns, 2) ensure that the correct part of the body is being targeted, and 3) present evidence that it would be of benefit as a treatment for that particular disease (GSK, 2020).

Phase 2:

A bigger group of individuals, usually ones who are carrying the illness, will be given the drug in order to assess the effectiveness of the drug on both preventing and treating the condition, as well as to assess the correct dosage (GSK, 2020).

Phase 3:

The final stage takes place with a much larger trial, in order to demonstrate and analyze effectiveness, dosage, side effects, and risks. Once this is done successfully, the treatment will be passed on to regulators who determine who can use it and how it can be used (GSK, 2020).

Vaccines under development

The following table presents a list of the current top ten vaccines under devlopment. It should be noted that two Russian vaccines (Sputnik V and EpiVacCoronal) have already received regulatory approval. However, neither of these vaccines have passed the third trial phase (Craven, 2020).