Logo

Log In Sign Up |  An official publication of: American College of Emergency Physicians
Navigation
  • Home
  • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
  • Clinical
    • Airway Managment
    • Case Reports
    • Critical Care
    • Guidelines
    • Imaging & Ultrasound
    • Pain & Palliative Care
    • Pediatrics
    • Resuscitation
    • Trauma & Injury
  • Resource Centers
    • mTBI Resource Center
  • Career
    • Practice Management
      • Benchmarking
      • Reimbursement & Coding
      • Care Team
      • Legal
      • Operations
      • Quality & Safety
    • Awards
    • Certification
    • Compensation
    • Early Career
    • Education
    • Leadership
    • Profiles
    • Retirement
    • Work-Life Balance
  • Columns
    • ACEP4U
    • Airway
    • Benchmarking
    • Brief19
    • By the Numbers
    • Coding Wizard
    • EM Cases
    • End of the Rainbow
    • Equity Equation
    • FACEPs in the Crowd
    • Forensic Facts
    • From the College
    • Images in EM
    • Kids Korner
    • Medicolegal Mind
    • Opinion
      • Break Room
      • New Spin
      • Pro-Con
    • Pearls From EM Literature
    • Policy Rx
    • Practice Changers
    • Problem Solvers
    • Residency Spotlight
    • Resident Voice
    • Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine
    • Sound Advice
    • Special OPs
    • Toxicology Q&A
    • WorldTravelERs
  • Resources
    • ACEP.org
    • ACEP Knowledge Quiz
    • Issue Archives
    • CME Now
    • Annual Scientific Assembly
      • ACEP14
      • ACEP15
      • ACEP16
      • ACEP17
      • ACEP18
      • ACEP19
    • Annals of Emergency Medicine
    • JACEP Open
    • Emergency Medicine Foundation
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Medical Editor in Chief
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Awards
    • Authors
    • Article Submission
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Subscribe
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Information

Overview of COVID-19 Vaccine Research

By Joshua Niforatos, MD, MTS | on November 2, 2020 | 2 Comments
Uncategorized
  • Tweet
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
Print-Friendly Version
3D illustration of coronavirus COVID-19 under the microscope.

With thousands of articles published weekly on COVID-19, navigating the literature on this emerging infectious disease can be daunting. To help health care professionals and the general public keep up and to fight medical misinformation, a group of emergency physicians started the website Brief19.com, which publishes analysis of COVID-19 research and policy five days a week, all for free. Here are highlights from recent Briefs. (Note: ACEP Now’s medical Editor in Chief, Jeremy Samuel Faust, MD, MS, MA, FACEP, is also Editor in Chief of Brief19.)

You Might Also Like
  • Common Questions About the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 Vaccines
  • ACEP Offers COVID-19 Vaccine Resources and More
  • Takeda’s Zika Vaccine Gets U.S. FDA’s ‘Fast Track’ Status
Explore This Issue
ACEP Now: Vol 39 – No 11 – November 2020

Face masks, face shields, and social distancing are likely our new normal for the foreseeable future. The prospects of achieving herd immunity in the United States without a vaccine appears grim.1 The literature on SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development is growing, with approximately 248 candidate vaccines at the time of this writing.2 Nevertheless, there are several fundamental concepts regarding vaccine development for SARS-CoV-2 that are broadly applicable and important to understand.

The Ideal Vaccine

An ideal vaccine should be effective in preventing symptomatic disease (eg, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine), significantly reducing illness severity (eg, seasonal influenza vaccine), or preventing seroconversion to prevent infection altogether.3,4 The ideal vaccine is multivalent and provides long-lasting immunity. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that effective vaccines should show a risk reduction of at least 30 percent.5

The ideal vaccine should be safe, ranging from no side effects to relatively minor side effects, such as headache, low-grade fever, injection site reaction, and myalgias.

Finally, the ideal vaccine should be cost-effective, be easy to administer, require a minimum number of administrations, and not require special storage conditions.4,6

Vaccine Development

The development of safe and effective pharmaceuticals takes, on average, 13 years from the time of discovery to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.7 The overall failure rate of pharmaceuticals to make it through this entire process exceeds 95 percent. In the late spring, it was estimated that a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine would be available within 12 to 18 months.8 While such estimates were seen by many as naive idealism, there are a few reasons such a timeline now looks more likely. Let’s dive in.

To begin, let’s identify important questions in the vaccine life cycle, which include:9

  1. Which antigens produce an immune response? (preclinical studies)
  2. How safe is the vaccine? (Phase I clinical trials)
  3. What dose is required for immunity? (Phase II clinical trials)
  4. How effective is the vaccine? (Phase II and III clinical trials)
  5. What is the long-term safety and efficacy in the general (heterogenous) population? (Phase IV clinical trials)

Thankfully, SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development is not starting from scratch. Attempts to develop a vaccine for coronavirus have been ongoing for years. Numerous groups have worked on a vaccine since the MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV epidemics.10

Pages: 1 2 3 | Single Page

Topics: Brief19coronavirusCOVID-19VaccinationVaccine

Related

  • Dr. Joe Sachs and “The Pitt” Are Redefining Public Health Education Through Storytelling

    June 11, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • June 2025 News from the College

    June 5, 2025 - 0 Comment
  • Masks: The Good, the Bad, and Systematic Reviews

    April 5, 2023 - 0 Comment

Current Issue

ACEP Now: June 2025 (Digital)

Read More

2 Responses to “Overview of COVID-19 Vaccine Research”

  1. November 17, 2020

    Arthur L. Diskin Reply

    Another interesting candidate is an oral vaccine from Vaxart. End of Phase 1. They are also developing oral flu and norovirus vaccines. Obviously, the logistics of an oral vaccine, especially in places like Africa where refrigeration would be a challenge would be amazing

  2. December 15, 2020

    George Ellis, MD,FACEP Reply

    Return to March for appropriate evaluation of specific information relevant to the symptoms was lacking some of the most important presentations. Ie: hypoxemia seemingly out of proportion to appearance, loss of the sense of smell and/or taste which is more likely to be seen in younger patients.

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*
*

Wiley
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Advertise
  • Cookie Preferences
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies. ISSN 2333-2603