On this day in 2020, the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine entered phase 1 trials, making it the first COVID vaccine to do so. This came less than a week after the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. How was it possible for this to happen so quickly? The third part of the #ChemVsCOVID series, produced with the Royal Society of Chemistry, gives a brief overview of the prior work and what the phase 1 trials looked at.
Relatively hot on the heels of the Pfizer & BioNTech RNA vaccine, today the UK has approved the Oxford University & AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The Oxford vaccine is a viral vector vaccine, which works slightly differently to the RNA vaccines. This graphic, made with the Royal Society of Chemistry, looks at how they work and highlights other vaccines of this type in use or development for COVID-19.