A Narrative Review of COVID-19 Vaccines

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world since early 2020 and its health, social, economic, and societal negative impacts at the global scale have been catastrophic. Since the early days of the pandemic, development of safe and effective vaccines was judged to be the best possible tool to minimize the effects of this pandemic. Drastic public health measures were put into place to stop the spread of the virus, with the hope that vaccines would be available soon. Thanks to the extraordinary commitments of many organizations and individuals from around the globe and the collaborative effort of many international scientists, vaccines against COVID-19 received regulatory approval for emergency human use in many jurisdictions in less than a year after the identification of the viral sequence. Several of these vaccines have been in use for some time; however, the pandemic is still ongoing and likely to persist for the foreseeable future. This is due to many reasons including reduced compliance with public health restrictions, limited vaccine manufacturing/distribution capacity, high rates of vaccine hesitancy, and the emergence of new variants with the capacity to spread more easily and to evade current vaccines. Here we discuss the discovery and availability of COVID-19 vaccines and evolving issues around mass vaccination programs.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance among Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries: A Rapid Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The 73rd World Health Assembly passed a resolution in May 2020 acknowledging the need for widespread vaccination as a nationwide public-health objective for preventing, controlling, and halting SARS-CoV-2 transmission [ 3 ]. Twenty-three vaccines have been authorized for emergency use in at least one country, 122 are in different clinical stages, and 194 are in pre-clinical developmental phases as of 15 November 2021 [ 4 ]. In most cases, the total effect of these vaccines is much higher than the threshold (50% efficacy) established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including the BNT162b2 mRNA (95%), mRNA-1273 (94.1%), Sputnik V (91.6%) and the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (70.4%) vaccines.…”

COVID‐19 vaccine‐induced immunity: Head‐to‐head comparison of mRNA (BNT162b2) versus inactivated (CoronaVac) vaccines

“…Two examples include the mRNA (BNT162b2) and inactivated (CoronaVac) COVID-19 vaccines. 2 There is a growing body of evidence showing that COVID-19 vaccine-specific immunity (specifically neutralizing antibodies) is a reliable marker of protection against COVID-19. 3 Therefore, evaluation of immune responses that are specific to COVID-19 vaccines is a critical undertaking, especially when comparing different types of the vaccines.…”

Effects of vaccination against COVID-19 on the emotional health of Peruvian older adults

“…However, the presence of new variants of concern, such as B.1.1.529, could affect the population's mental health (Jain and Jolly, 2021;Su et al, 2022) due to their greater infectivity and immune escape from vaccination (Ren et al, 2022). Given this, the need for a third (Eroglu et al, 2022;World Health Organization, 2021), or even a fourth (Tylicki et al, 2022), COVID-19 vaccine booster is currently under discussion. So, considering that the perception of the vaccine's effectiveness correlates with the level of concern about the new variants (Temsah et al, 2021), it is important to continue monitoring mental health in the most vulnerable populations such as the elderly, and its evolution during future vaccination policies against COVID-19.…”