Recent SARS-CoV-2 Outlook and Implications in a COVID-19 Vaccination Era

While repurposed drugs came in handy earlier in the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, vaccination has been considered a more sustainable approach. The recent spikes have been linked to “double,” “triple,” and even multi-mutant variants, thus renewing calls for deeper structural and functional insights of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as a lead to rationale design of therapeutics, vaccines, and point-of-care diagnostics. There is a repertoire of findings from the earliest SARS-CoV-2 molecular mimicry to evade host immunity cum host immune responses to the role of the viral glycocalyx in modulating the susceptibility and severity of infection through attraction and repulsive interactions. Recently, molecular studies of some viral components that aid infection in the face of vaccination seem unending. In addition, the wave of infections and the attendant case fatality ratios have necessitated the need for emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines and in vitro diagnostics. This review provides key updates of SARS-CoV-2, current antigenic and formulation strategies, with emergency use authorizations considerations for future vaccine candidates and diagnostics. We also premise that despite the difficulty in modeling and analyzing glycans, understanding and exploiting their roles in the SARS-CoV-2 architecture is fundamental to glycan-based COVID-19 vaccines devoid of inconsistent clinical outcomes.