COVID-19 vaccinations: What's the progress?

Which vaccines are approved? How many people have been vaccinated yet? Here's the global progress on vaccination against SARSCoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

This article is updated once a month as well as when a new vaccine is approved.

How many people are vaccinated? How far have researchers got in the development of a vaccine?

There are more than 50 clinical trials worldwide testing potential vaccines, known as candidates, against COVID-19. So far, four of the vaccine candidates have been approved.

Please note: To be displayed as approved in the chart, a vaccine needs to be either approved by the USFDA or the European Medicines Agency (EMA), or cleared for emergency use by FDA, EMA or WHO. More details can be found here.

The approved vaccines were developed by:

BioNTech-Pfizer

Moderna AstraZeneca

Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) Still, the majority of vaccine candidates for COVID-19 are still in a preclinical phase. That means the candidate vaccines are being tested in animal experiments, for example, rather than with human patients. When those tests are deemed successful, candidate vaccines can move into clinical trial phases. That's when they are tested with humans. There are three clinical trial phases for efficacy and safety before a vaccine can be approved for use by humans. The phases differ from each other, most significantly in their scale:

In Phase I, a vaccine is tested on small patient groups.

In Phase II, a vaccine is tested on larger groups of at least 100 patients; researchers can also test their candidate vaccine in specific subgroups, such as people with preexisting conditions, or patients with particular demographic characteristics, such as a higher age group.

In Phase III, a vaccine candidate is tested on at least 1,000 patients.

Some companies, such as BioNTech-Pfizer in Europe, and Sinovac in China, have tested their vaccine candidates in several trials in parallel. For example, they have tested the same vaccine but in different age groups or with different dosages.

If clinical trials are successful, a company can formally apply to regulatory bodies to have their vaccine approved for use by the general public.

Three regulatory authorities are considered to be particularly important in this context: The FDA in the US, the European EMA, and the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Device Agency in Japan.

What happens after a vaccine has been approved?

When a vaccine is approved, it doesn't mean everybody can get it immediately.

First, the vaccine has to be produced on a mass scale. With COVID-19, manufacturers aim to

More than 100 research teams are trying to develop a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine.