A Review on the Effectivity of the Current COVID-19 Drugs and Vaccines: Are They Really Working Against the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Variants?

Abstract

Purpose of Review In order to eradicate the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists around the world have been working very hard for a year or more with the motto of designing effective drugs and vaccines against the severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Along with the positive results with the antiviral drugs and a few commercialized vaccines, the unresponsiveness as well as some side effects of such therapies have also been noticed, possibly due to the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variants. Therefore, current review summarized the actual effectiveness of the antivirals and vaccines which are in current use for the treatment of the COVID-19 patients. Recent Findings So far, some drugs have been found with hopeful results among which remdesivir and arbidol are with momentous clinical progress. Besides drug designing, vaccine development has been a major effort whereby the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) and BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccines showed the required efficacy and have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA). Summary While a number of existing/repurposed/repositioned or new drugs and the currently used commercial vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 apparently seem to be effective against COVID-19 mitigation, the new variants of the virus as well as the recently increased cases raised the doubt about the usefulness of these agents. Current review figured out the efficacy of different drugs and vaccines in terms of their action potential against SARS-CoV-2 and further recommended some useful measures which may be useful for future remedies.

Characterization of the significant decline in humoral immune response six months post-SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination: A systematic review

“…The search keywords used included "SARS-CoV-2", "COVID-19", "declining humoral response", "post-vaccination", "mRNA vaccine", "Pfizer-BioNTech", "Moderna", "mRNA-1273", and "mRNA BNT162b2" which resulted in 51 journal articles. For the inclusion criteria, articles reporting the following data were considered: (1) all participants who received a primary vaccination cycle with two complete doses of Pfizer-BioNTech (mRNA BNT162b2) or Moderna (mRNA-1273), (2) with at least a record of 10 patients and above (3) individual IgG or IgA, total Ig, or neutralizing anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers, (4) quantitative or semi-quantitative antibody tests, (6) articles reporting humoral response 4-8months post-vaccination, (7) articles available in the English language, and (8) randomized controlled, cohort, preprint or published papers and (9) providing complete and extractable data given the limited papers available for this novel disease and the mRNA vaccine.…”

“…1,2 Despite the increasing availability of therapeutics against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, mass vaccination is the mainstay for limiting new infections, reinfections, breakthrough infections, and unwanted sequelae from COVID-19. [3][4][5][6] Although nationwide immunization programs have already been implemented in most countries, the mass production, allocation, and accessibility to COVID-19 vaccines remain a hurdle, especially in low-income countries where administration of primary and adjunctive doses could be challenging. 7 Among different types of COVID-19 vaccines, the utilization of mRNA-based vaccines is unprecedented.…”

Efektivitas PPKM Darurat Dalam Penanganan Lonjakan Kasus Covid-19

“…Vaksin yang secara umum digunakan seperti Pfizer dan Moderna memiliki efikasi 94%, AstraZeneca memiliki efikasi 70,4% setelah dua dosis penyuntikan, Johnson & Johnson efektif hingga 72%, serta Gam-Covid-Vac (Gamaleya) pada uji klinik terbukti memiliki efikasi sebesar 91%. Sedangkan vaksin-vaksin potensial lain seperti Novavax diperkirakan memiliki efikasi 96%, Sinopharm dengan efikasi 79%, Covaxin dengan efikasi 81% serta Sinovac memiliki efikasi 50% (Noor, 2021).…”

COVID-19 vaccines: their effectiveness against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its emerging variants

“…The spike (S) glycoprotein, residing outside of the virus particle, imparts the crown-like appearance of the virus (Noor and Maniha 2020 ). The most important thing to understand the viral virulence is to ponder that the spike (S) protein mediates the attachment of the virus particle and subsequent enter into the host cell; and it is to be noted that the S protein is the prime target for the vaccine action development and for the antibody-based therapies (Noor and Maniha 2020 ; Heinz and Stiasny 2021 ; Noor 2021a , c ; Zhang et al 2020 ; Huang et al 2020 ). The S proteins are coated with polysaccharide molecules which apparently camouflage them and hence thus help the virus to escape the surveillance by the host immune system during the viral entry (Noor and Maniha 2020 ; Huang et al 2020 ).…”