Viruses Basel
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The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected more than 100 million people globally and caused over 2.5 million deaths in just over one year since its discovery in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The pandemic has evoked widespread collateral damage to societies and economies, and has destabilized mental health and well-being. Early in 2020, unprecedented efforts went into the development of vaccines that generate effective antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. ⋯ Vaccine rollout has proceeded around the globe. Previously, we and others had proposed a target product profile (TPP) for ideal/optimal and acceptable/minimal COVID-19 vaccines. How well do these candidate vaccines stack up to a harmonized TPP? Here, we perform a comparative analysis in several categories of these candidate vaccines based on the latest available trial data and highlight the early successes as well as the hurdles and barriers yet to be overcome for ending the global COVID-19 pandemic.