How far is the vaccine?
More than 140 teams of researchers across the world are racing to develop vaccines against Covid-19, which has crippled people's lives and global economy.
Of them, only two teams in the UK and China are showing strong hope.
Oxford University is leading the world in developing a vaccine. Its vaccine is in a combined Phase II/III trial in the UK and has recently gone into Phase III trials in South Africa and Brazil.
The project may deliver emergency vaccines by October, according to a New York Times report.
Only one other vaccine, developed by the Chinese firm Sinopharm, has started a late-stage trial.
In May, they published promising results from a Phase I safety trial. Unpublished data from Phase II trials show that the vaccine produced a strong immune response, leading the Chinese military to approve it on June 25 for a year as a "specially needed drug".
CanSino would not say whether the vaccination would be mandatory or optional for soldiers, says the New York Times report.
The Economist, however, claims that the Chinese vaccine does not have the global support and finance that Oxford's does.
AstraZeneca, a British pharmaceutical company, is building an international supply chain to make sure that the vaccine developed by Oxford University is available "widely and rapidly".
According to AstraZeneca, making each dose of the vaccine costs about as much as a cup of coffee, says a report by The Economist.
Two billion doses have already been ordered. The company has agreed to supply over a billion doses to Europe, Britain, America, and GAVI, a vaccine finance group.
The Serum Institute of India is also producing an additional one billion doses of the Oxford vaccine, mainly for low- and middle-income countries, of which 400m will be made before the end of 2020. In Britain, 30 million doses will be available by September, according to The Economist report.
Companies in the USA, China, Germany, France and Sweden are among others in the race to develop vaccines.
An Indian pharmaceutical company has suddenly claimed to have developed a vaccine which will be made available on August 15, the country's Independence Day. But experts expressed doubt about it.
A Bangladeshi pharmaceutical company has also recently claimed to have developed a vaccine against Covid-19.
But the WHO tracker does not have any information about it.
On July 2, the global health agency published the draft landscape of Covid-19 candidate vaccines.