A race to vaccinate the world: An overview of COVID-19 vaccine status

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in a staggering 71 million cases reported and 1.6 million deaths worldwide (as of 12th Dec 2020)1. Ever since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the situation a pandemic in March this year, there has been an urgent need for a vaccine to be approved and distributed across the globe. With the recent approval of Pfizer/ BioNTech’s vaccine in the UK, Canada, and most recently in the US2, there has been a continuous discussion around the safety and efficacy of these novel vaccines.
Here, we aim to provide an update on the COVID-19 vaccines mainly comparing the top 3 leaders in the field - Pfizer/ BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca/ Oxford.