Primus inter pares: A Comparison and Ranking of COVID-19 Vaccines

Abstract

As the world fights the recent devastating calamity, coronavirus pandemic, humanity experiences the most accelerated vaccine development and vaccination in history. We holistically compare, rate and rank SARS-Cov-2 vaccines as well as vaccine platforms in multi-attributes as the first study in the literature. We use grey relational analysis as a multi-criteria decision-making tool, wider grey systems theory to compare, rate and rank the vaccines. We select 12 leading vaccines and 14 attributes from efficacy rate, safety/reactogenicity and protection against variants to children use, from approvals to prices, to logistics and market share to form a 360-degree comparison. According to equally weighted attributes, Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is at the top rank. The second rank belongs to Moderna when the third belongs to Sinovac. The top three are followed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and others. Pfizer/BioNTech is also at the first rank and followed by Moderna and Novavax with respect to 40% weighted efficacy rate. Our ranking approach, which is unbiased and reproducible employs a Wuhan- originated tool, grey systems theory to rank the vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, another Wuhan- originated agent. Since all vaccines are valuable, our effort is to determine the primus inter pares (= first among equals).