Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jul 13, 2020
Date Accepted: Dec 8, 2020
What are the most promising treatments and vaccine candidates for COVID-19? A global survey of experts involved in virus research
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents a great public health challenge around the world, especially given the urgency to identify effective drugs and develop a vaccine in a short period of time. Globally, there are several drug and vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials, yet it is not yet clear which will prove successful.
Objective:
This study addresses this gap by mapping the treatments and vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials and assessing the opinions on these candidates of virus-related researchers from all over the world.
Methods:
Clinical trial data were obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov and the survey’s respondents were authors of recent scientific publications related to viruses, SARS virus, coronavirus, and COVID-19 indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection.
Results:
The results show that remdesivir, immunoglobulin from cured patients and plasma are considered the most promising treatments, and ChAdOx1 and mRNA-1273 the most promising vaccine candidates. They also indicate that a vaccine could be available within eighteen months.
Conclusions:
Changes in the clinical trial process are currently being implemented worldwide in an attempt to accelerate the discovery of an entirely new vaccine to prevent COVID-19 8. These changes may be why the respondents felt it would take such a short time to develop a vaccine. Despite the relatively high percentage of unknown answers, which may be linked to the short-term perspective of this survey and the current uncertainties surrounding the subject at hand, the results of this survey suggest that the efforts made so far to accelerate the discovery of a new vaccine are in line with its purpose. If these expectations are confirmed, perhaps the discovery that will bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic is not so very far away
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.