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Two approaches for vaccines against COVID-19 are safe, suggest the induction of relevant immune responses and will be pursued further.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the rapid development of a vaccine against the causative coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and has resulted in the acceleration of new technologies.

One approach to the vaccine is to inoculate people with viral vectors that express the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, and another is to use an mRNA encoding the spike protein. A group in China using an adenovirus-vectored vaccine reports the results of a phase 2 trial of 508 people, and a group in Oxford reports a phase 1/2 trial of a chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored vaccine in 1,077 people. A phase 1 trial of an mRNA-based approach in 45 people has been also been reported. All trials indicate good safety and potential to take the vaccine to the next stage.