The status of COVID-19 vaccines in India: A review

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, an etiologic agent of the COVID-19 pandemic disease in late December 2019 has left the whole world aghast with huge health and economic losses. Due to a lack of specific knowledge and understanding at the initial stages, an unprecedented rise in COVID-19 cases has been recorded globally. Various preventive measures and strategies were implemented, however, for the radical control of SARS-CoV-2 infections; it seems that the only effective way to control the ongoing infections is large-scale vaccination. So far, WHO has approved 11 vaccines for emergency use namely Pfizer/BioNTech, Oxford/Astra Zeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, Covilo, Novavax, Covovax, Spikevax, Can Sino, Comirnaty, and Coronavac while five other needs approval. The worldwide vaccination dataset reveals that 65.7% of the world population has received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. As a consequence of the proactive implementation of India's vaccination program, a historical milestone of administering over 1.9 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been achieved on 19th May 2022. This review summarizes the different types of traditional and modern vaccine designing strategies with an emphasis on COVID-19. Moreover, the review highlights the status of vaccines for COVID-19 approved in India which includes both indigenous and non-indigenous vaccines. The present article also encompasses vaccine designing and developmental strategies, efficacy, safety profile and usage among the population, and the efficacy of modern vaccines over traditional ones.