COVID-19 Vaccination Strategies and Challenges - A Literature Review

The novel coronavirus disease, now popularly known as COVID-19, was first described in China in 2019. COVID-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 which shares multiple genetic similarities with the Middle East respiratory syndrome virus (MERS-CoV) and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus (SARS-CoV). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020 due to rapid community transmission occurring worldwide. The emerging public health concerns pose challenges to health care systems worldwide and have left the medical community in a race against time for providing answers to this viral zoonotic disease now showing human to human transmission. Antiviral and immunomodulatory drugs have not yet given a clear edge over this fatal disease hence, focusing all the burden and hope on a potential vaccine that might help us overcome this pandemic. This literature review focuses on describing various approaches being used by pharmaceutical companies for developing a potential lifesaving vaccine. Apart from that this article focuses on the mechanism of various vaccine candidates while also providing a basic outline of the Coronavirus family. Finally, the review also talks about unrealized challenges and ethical issues that are or will be faced in the process of developing this potential vaccine.