• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.347-348
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• 2023

Vaccines help protect people from infections. However, Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) vaccinees often still become infected with COVID-19 variants (breakthrough infections) and may go on to suffer from long COVID symptoms due to short-lasting immunity and less-effective protection provided by available vaccines. Moreover, the current COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent viral transmission and ward off only about 15% of breakthrough infections. To prepare more effective vaccines, it is essential to predict the viral strains that will be circulating based on available epidemiological data. The World Health Organization recommends in advance which influenza strains are expected to be prevalent during influenza season to guide the production of influenza vaccines by pharmaceutical companies. However, future emerging COVID-19 strain(s) have not been possible to predict since no sound epidemiological information has been established. Thus, for more effective protection, immune stimulators alone or in combination with vaccines would be preferable to protect people from COVID-19 infection. One of those remedies would be ginseng, which has been used for potentiating immunity in the past.

• Korean journal of aerospace and environmental medicine
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.13-16
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• 2021

The coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) vaccine is expected to play an important role in stopping the pandemic. Studies show that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at keeping you from getting COVID-19. Getting a COVID-19 vaccine will also help keep you from getting seriously ill even if you do get COVID-19. Efforts to find an effective vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 have progressed unprecedentedly through active support from public research grants and private-public partnership programs. Clinical studies have been actively conducted, and some vaccines are being vaccinated with approval for urgent use. The WHO has approved and supplied the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. In Korea, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was approved for urgent use, and vaccination began on February 26, 2021. In this paper, the efficacy and side effects of each vaccines and the effect on pilots and air traffic controllers related to COVID-19 vaccination were investigated in terms of aviation medicine.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.149-173
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• 2022

Vaccine nationalism and its implications to vaccine supply were a huge concern globally when COVID-19 vaccines first became available in 2021. At the time, vaccine supply was limited and it was difficult for many countries around the world to get adequate supply of the COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate their people. At its most benign, vaccine nationalism delayed the access of poorer countries to vaccines that are widely considered as the long-term solution to the COVID-19 pandemic. Poorer countries needed to resort to diplomacy to wrangle early access to vaccine supply from vaccine-producing countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and others. In particular, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte leveraged his country's Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States and the need for Filipino nurses by countries like the United Kingdom and Germany to secure early access to COVID-19 vaccines. It all seems trivial now (in 2022) because of better global vaccine supply, but in 2021 when countries scrambled for access to scarce COVID-19 vaccines, Rodrigo Duterte leveraged the Philippines' assets to gain early access to vaccine supply.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.5.1-5.22
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• 2021

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has developed as a pandemic, and it created an outrageous effect on the current healthcare and economic system throughout the globe. To date, there is no appropriate therapeutics or vaccines against the disease. The entire human race is eagerly waiting for the development of new therapeutics or vaccines against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Efforts are being taken to develop vaccines at a rapid rate for fighting against the ongoing pandemic situation. Amongst the various vaccines under consideration, some are either in the preclinical stage or in the clinical stages of development (phase-I, -II, and -III). Even, phase-III trials are being conducted for some repurposed vaccines like Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, polio vaccine, and measles-mumps-rubella. We have highlighted the ongoing clinical trial landscape of the COVID-19 as well as repurposed vaccines. An insight into the current status of the available antigenic epitopes for SARS-CoV-2 and different types of vaccine platforms of COVID-19 vaccines has been discussed. These vaccines are highlighted throughout the world by different news agencies. Moreover, ongoing clinical trials for repurposed vaccines for COVID-19 and critical factors associated with the development of COVID-19 vaccines have also been described.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.67-82
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• 2022

The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 led to inconsistent public health policies that resulted in COVID-19 containment failure. These factors resulted in increased hospitalization and death. To prevent viral spread and achieve herd immunity, the only safe and effective measure is to provide to vaccinates. Ever since the release of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleotide sequence in January of 2020, research centers and pharmaceutical companies from many countries have developed different types of vaccines including mRNA, recombinant protein, and viral vector vaccines. Prior to initiating vaccinations, phase 3 clinical trials are necessary. However, no vaccine has yet to complete a phase 3 clinical trial. Many products obtained "emergency use authorization" from governmental agencies such as WHO, FDA etc. The Korean government authorized the use of five different vaccines. The viral vector vaccine of Oxford/AstraZeneca and the Janssen showed effectiveness of 76% and 66.9%, respectively. The mRNA vaccine of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna showed effectiveness of 95% and 94.1%, respectively. The protein recombinant vaccine of Novavax showed an effectiveness of 90.4%. In this review, we compared the characteristics, production platform, synthesis principles, authorization, protective effects, immune responses, clinical trials and adverse effects of five different vaccines currently used in Korea. Through this review, we conceptualize the importance of selecting the optimal vaccine to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2022

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines in children aged 5-11 years, a rapid systematic review was conducted on published clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines and studies that analyzed real-world data on adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination. Methods: A systematic search was conducted on medical literature in international (Ovid-MEDLINE) and pre-published literature databases (medRxiv), followed by handsearching up to January 4, 2022. We used terms including COVID-19, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and vaccines, and the certainty of evidence was graded using the GRADE approach. Results: A total of 1,675 studies were identified, of which five were finally selected. Among the five studies, four consisted of data from clinical trials of each of the four types of COVID-19 vaccines (BNT162b2, mRNA-1273, CoronaVac, and BBIBP-CorV). The remaining study consisted of real-world data on the safety of the BNT162b2 vaccine in children aged 5-11 years. This systematic review identified that COVID-19 vaccines in recipients aged 5-11 years produced a favorable immune response, and were vaccines were effective against COVID-19. The safety findings for the BNT162b2 vaccine in children and early adolescents aged 5-11 years were similar to those data noted in the clinical trial. Conclusions: There is limited data on COVID-19 vaccines in children aged 5-11 years. Consequently continuous and comprehensive monitoring is necessary for the evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2022

Diagnostics, vaccines, and drugs are indispensable tools and control measures employed to overcome infectious diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Diagnostic tools based on RT-PCR were developed early in the COVID-19 pandemic and were urgently required for quarantine (testing, tracing and isolation). Vaccines such as mRNA vaccines and virus-vectored vaccines were also successfully developed using new platform technologies within one year after identifying severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as the causative agent of COVID-19. Drug development has been conducted in various ways including drug repurposing, convalescent plasma therapy, and monoclonal antibody development. Among the above efforts, this review examines COVID-19 drug development along with the related and upcoming challenges.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.89-97
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• 2022

More than 2 years after the explosion of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, extensive efforts have been made to develop safe and efficacious vaccines against infections with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The pandemic has opened a new era of vaccine development based on next-generation platforms, including messenger RNA (mRNA)-based technologies, and paved the way for the future of mRNA-based therapeutics to provide protection against a wide range of infectious diseases. Multiple vaccines have been developed at an unprecedented pace to protect against COVID-19 worldwide. However, important knowledge gaps remain to be addressed, especially in terms of how vaccines induce immunogenicity and efficacy in those who are elderly. Here, we discuss the various vaccine platforms that have been utilized to combat COVID-19 and emphasize how these platforms can be a powerful tool to react quickly to future pandemics.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.4.1-4.18
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• 2021

The global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still threatening human health, economy, and social life worldwide. As a counteraction for this devastating disease, a number of vaccines are being developed with unprecedented speed combined with new technologies. As COVID-19 vaccines are being developed in the absence of a licensed human coronavirus vaccine, there remain further questions regarding the long-term efficacy and safety of the vaccines, as well as immunological mechanisms in depth. This review article discusses the current status of COVID-19 vaccine development, mainly focusing on antigen design, clinical trials in later stages, and immunological considerations for further study.

• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.14-21
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• 2022

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has been rampant since the end of 2019, has evidently affected pain management in clinical practice. Fortunately, a COVID-19 vaccination program is currently in progress worldwide. There is an ongoing discussion that pain management using steroid injections can decrease COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, although currently there is no direct evidence to support this statement. As such, the feeling of pain in patients is doubled in addition to the co-existing ill-effects of social isolation associated with the pandemic. Thus, in the COVID-19 era, it has become necessary that physicians be able to provide high quality pain management without negatively impacting COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. Steroids can alter the entire process involved in the generation of adaptive immunity after vaccination. The period of hypophysis-pituitary-adrenal axis suppression is known to be 1 to 4 weeks after steroid injection, and although the exact timing for peak efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is slightly different for each vaccine, the average is approximately 2 weeks. It is suggested to avoid steroid injections for a total of 4 weeks (1 week before and after the two vaccine doses) for the double-shot vaccines, and for 2 weeks in total (1 week before and after vaccination) for a single-shot vaccine. This review focuses on the basic concepts of the various COVID-19 vaccines, the effect of steroid injections on vaccine efficacy, and suggestions regarding an appropriate interval between the administration of steroid injections and the COVID-19 vaccine.