The efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccine: A protocol of systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the most wide-spread and threatening infectious diseases in human history. Experts in the field of medicine and biology are working to develop methods to treat and prevent COVID-19. Currently, COVID-19 is predominantly treated with symptomatic therapy and there is still a lack of effective antiviral therapy. Therefore, the prevention and control of novel coronavirus is primarily focused on vaccine development. Several vaccines have been developed, but their relative efficacy and safety have not been proven. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.Methods and analysis: The electronic databases we will use to retrieve information include PubMed, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Database and Weipu Electronics. The retrieval period is from the establishment of the database to March 2021. All randomized controlled trials in humans vaccinated with COVID-19 were collected, and data were independently selected and extracted according to predesigned inclusion/exclusion criteria. Full-text screening, data extraction and quality assessment were conducted independently by two reviewers. Two additional investigators will conduct report quality, risk of bias, sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis to ensure the reliability of our study results. The software RevMan 5.3 was used for statistical analysis. Systematic review and meta-analyses will be conducted to evaluate the pooled evidence of efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.Result: This study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.Conclusion: The conclusions of this study will provide an evidence-based analysis of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42021242581