Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in late 2019 in China and caused a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

To mitigate the public health, economic and societal impacts of the virus, a vaccine is urgently needed.

The development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines was initiated in early January 2020 when the sequence of the virus became available and moved at record speed with one Phase I trial already starting in March 2020 and currently more than 180 vaccines in various stages of development.

Phase I/II trial data is already available for several vaccine candidates and many have moved into Phase III trials. The data available so far suggests that efective and safe vaccines might become available within months
rather than years.

In the paper are reviewed what types of vaccines are in the pipeline as well as initial data from nonhuman primate studies, Phase I and Phase I/II trials.