Pandemic Lessons Learned: Rushed COVID Vaccines

COVID-19 was regarded as an emergency, so the U.S. Food and Drug Administration skipped the approval process for use of the newly developed vaccines under Emergency Use Authorization. It can be said that the designs of the spike protein-based vaccines were also rushed. The COVID-19 vaccines are the only vaccines in history that were developed and distributed in the midst of a pandemic. All the other vaccines took years to be designed, tested, and approved.

Previously, when designing a vaccine, although short-term protection was welcome, long-term immune response was always the top priority. The most important immune response that a vaccine must induce is the memory T cell response.