What to know about 14 approved COVID-19 vaccines

According to COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker, 14 COVID-19 vaccines have been approved by at least one country following 315 trials of 109 vaccine candidates.

The 14 approved vaccines have undergone three phases to ascertain their level of safety and effectiveness.

Phase one involves enrolling tens or hundreds of healthy adults for first clinical studies to basically assess the initial safety of the vaccine and identify the correct dose.

Promising vaccine candidates, which make it to Phase two are subjected to larger studies designed to establish how well the vaccine activates the immune system response in hundreds or thousands of healthy individuals sampled for the clinical trials.

To determine approval for widespread use, evidence is reviewed by regulatory agencies following phase three which involves administering the vaccine on tens of thousands of volunteers at the highest risk of the disease to determine whether the vaccine protects them from becoming sick.

Below are the 14 approved COVID-19 vaccines:

· Anhui Zhifei Longcom: RBD-Dimer has been approved in China and Uzbekistan.

· Bharat Biotech: Covaxin has been approved in India, Iran, Mauritius, Nepa and Zimbabwe.

· CanSino: Ad5-nCoV approved in China, Hungary, Mexico and Pakistan.

· Chumakov Center: KoviVac approved in Russia.

· FBRI: EpiVacCorona approved in Russia.

· Gamaleya: Sputnik V approved in 55 countries.

· Janssen (Johnson & Johnson): Ad26.COV2.S has been approved in 35 countries.

· Moderna: mRNA-1273 approved in 41 countries.

· Oxford/AstraZeneca: AZD1222 approved in 81 countries.

· Pfizer/BioNTech: BNT162b2 approved in 79 countries.

· Serum Institute of India: Covishield approved in 30 countries.