COVID-19 Vaccine Development, Trials and Tribulations

The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is a pandemic viral infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Currently, COVID-19 has affected 210 countries and territories around the world. But there is no clinically approved antiviral drug or vaccine against COVID-19. Governments, private manufactures, academic institutions and non-profit organizations are working hard at a breakneck pace to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. However, vaccine development is very lengthy and expensive process, typically takes many years to produce a licensed vaccine. Because of the high failure rates and cost factors, developers generally follow a linear development sequence with multiple pauses for analysis of data. But in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, development steps need to be executed parallel before confirming the outcome of the previous step. In the current review, we summarize the process involved in the COVID-19 vaccine development and its challenges.