The 2020 Pandemic: Current SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Development

Coronaviruses are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome infecting animals and humans. Coronaviruses have been described more than 70 years ago and contain many species. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) are lethal species caused by human coronaviruses (HCoVs). Currently, a novel strain of HCoVs, named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). SARS-CoV-2 was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital city of the Hubei province of China, and has since spread worldwide causing an outbreak in more than 200 countries. The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak was declared a pandemic on March 11th, 2020 and a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) in late January 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO). SARS-CoV-2 infects the respiratory tract causing flu-like symptoms and, in some, may cause severe illness like pneumonia and multi-organ failure leading to death. Today, Covid-19 cases almost reaching 9 million, with more than 450 thousand deaths. There is an urgent demand for developing a vaccine since no effective therapies or vaccines have been approved to this day to prevent or minimize the spread of the infection. In this review, we summarized the furthest vaccines in the clinical pipeline.