Vaccine technologies used to develop COVID-19 vaccines

ABSTRACT

In December 2019, cases of atypical pneumonia were diagnosed in hospital patients in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The disease, now known as COVID- I 9 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As case numbers increased and spread across the planet many companies scrambled to develop vaccines to control the infection and disease. Prior research on SARS-CoV-1, new vaccine technologies and unprecedented funding have allowed vaccines to be developed and approved in record time, without the usual pauses and bypassing any of the requirements of the vaccine approval process. This paper is a review of the current literature on some of the vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 and of the new technologies used to produce them.