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an adult female receiving a vaccination administered by a clinician
CDC on Unsplash
Swine Flu vaccination administered by way of a jet injector in October 1976.

COVID-19 vaccines are on the way

It is relatively quick to develop a new vaccine, and there are many new techniques that can be used to make different vaccines. The big hurdle is to test both the effect and any side effects during the phase III clinical trial of potential vaccines. This traditionally takes several years, and then the vaccine must be produced in very large quantities, which can also take a long time and is very expensive.

Professor Dr. Med. Anders Fomsgaard discusses with Jens Degett the five main groups of vaccines that are on the way (in Danish). Two of the vaccine candidates are developed in Denmark.

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Below we have listed the five main groups of vaccines that are being tested. It makes it a little easier to follow the podcast if you have the list of the different types of vaccine at hand. The names of the individual vaccines can be copied to your search engine if you would like to find more information about the particular vaccine you are interested in.

Viral Vectors (Made using viruses)

  • Ad26 (Janssen/J&J, Holland/USA) *

  • Ad5 (CanSino, China)  

  • VSV (Pasteur Institut, France) 
  • ChimpAd (Oxford/AstraZeneca, UK) *

RNA Vaccines (Made from RNA material copied from the virus)

  • mRNA (Moderna/NIAID, USA) *

  • modRNA  (Sanofi, France) *
  • RNA (Pfizer/BioNTech, USA) 

DNA Vaccines (Made from DNA material copied from the virus)

  • Inovio vaccine (USA) 

  • Statens Serum Institut vaccine (SSI, Denmark)

Protein (Made from proteins from the virus)

  • NVX-CoV2373 Rec. Protein/Adjuvans (Novavax, USA)*

  • KU Adaptavac (Novo Nordisk, Denmark) 

Fully Disabled COVID-19 Virus

  • Sinovac (SinoPharm, China)*

* Vaccines currently in phase III (as of date of recording this story).