COVID-19 vaccines: the most used, those in development and those that failed

A score of vaccines against COVID-19 have been approved worldwide since the first clinical results in 2020 gave some hope. There are global vaccines, other national ones and, finally, alliances between countries for geostrategic reasons.

This is the current panorama:

The main vaccines

Two vaccines based on it dominate the world: the drug from the alliance Pfizer (United States) and BioNTech (Germany), marketed under the name Comirnaty, and that of the American company Moderna, known as Spikevax.

Pfizer / BioNTech’s vaccine is licensed in 100 countries, Moderna’s in more than 70, including the European Union (EU) and the United States, according to a tally by Canadian McGill University.

A Chinese study published on the internet on September 26, but which has not yet been evaluated by other scientists, affirms that it is similar to that of many other drugs, even against the Delta variant, currently predominant worldwide.

To reach that conclusion, the Chinese researchers collected all the efficacy data available to date.

Those of discreet success

Two vaccines developed with “viral vector” technology initially raised a lot of hope: the one from the Anglo-Swedish laboratory AstraZeneca, produced in collaboration with the University of Oxford, and the drug from Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of the American laboratory Johnson & Johnson.

However, the AstraZeneca vaccine (marketed under the name Vaxzevria) generated a lot of mistrust due to the risk of, albeit in a statistically weak probability.

The drug was approved in the EU but not in the United States. It is currently the main supply of the international Covax program, destined for poor countries.

The fourth vaccine approved in the EU is that of Janssen, which initially had the great advantage that it is administered with a single dose, unlike the other immunizers. But the Delta variant disrupted the laboratory’s plans, since that lineage, the most widespread today, needs at least two doses of vaccine to be defeated.

National vaccines with limited distribution

Several vaccines are essentially injected in their country of origin, and in other neighboring countries, for geopolitical interests.

This is the case of, but it has not been recognized by either the EU or the World Health Organization (WHO).

So far, Russia has developed four vaccines: Sputnik V, EpiVacCorona, CoviVac, and Sputnik Light (single dose).

China developed vaccines through its laboratories: Sinovac (CoronaVac), CanSino or Anhui Zhifei Longcom (RBD-Dimer vaccine). .

India, for its part, gave the green light at the end of August to the product of one of its laboratories, Zydus Cadila, which became the first DNA technology vaccine used with humans. Previously, the Asian giant had approved a local vaccine, from the Bharat Biotech laboratory (in addition to the local version of AstraZeneca, called Covishield).

Cuba developed three vaccines :, which has aroused interest from countries such as Venezuela or Vietnam.

Other governments such as Iran (Barekat), Kazakhstan (QazVac) or Taiwan (Medigen), have approved their own vaccine, although without having injected it on a large scale.

The candidates

In addition to the Russian Sputnik V and the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine, two other candidates are being examined by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), opening the way to a forthcoming request for authorization in the EU.

On the one hand, there is the American vaccine based on proteins that provoke an immune response, without viruses.

And then there is the German CureVac, which had disappointing results in late June, despite using messenger RNA technology.

In total, including vaccines already authorized, according to the latest WHO report, dated September 24. In addition, 194 other drugs are in preclinical development.

In Spain, the pharmaceutical company Hipra is testing its own version of the anticovid drug in humans.

The failures

This Tuesday it was learned of the last drug that remained by the way, the messenger RNA vaccine from the French laboratory Sanofi, despite positive intermediate results.

At the end of January, the MSD laboratory (known as Merck in the US market) announced the end of two projects.

In December 2020 Australia announced that it was abandoning the development of a covid vaccine.

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