Vaccines for COVID-19: learning from ten phase II trials to inform clinical and public health vaccination programmes

Public health professionals and clinicians, in many countries, are immersed in the ongoing and upcoming vaccination programmes for COVID-19. Published information from vaccine trials is complex. There are important and helpful insights about the nature of the available and forthcoming vaccines, immune responses and side-effects from phase II trials. We have systematically summarised information from 10 such trials on the nature of the vaccines, exclusions from the trials, immunological effects and side-effects. Some important information within these trial reports is not available in the phase III trial articles, so a complete picture requires examination of phase II and phase III trials for each vaccine. We recommend our systematic approach for the examination of other upcoming COVID-19 vaccine phase II and III trials.