The vaccines are being rolled out - but approval is still on an emergency basis, and the evidence underpinning those decisions is only just becoming available for scrutiny.
In this podcast we talk to Baruch Fischhoff, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on public health communication about how that messaging should be done.
Peter Doshi, associate editor at The BMJ, and vaccine regulation researcher also joins us to talk about the data now released on the vaccine trials - what questions does it raise, and what are the next steps for researching safety.
For more on The BMJ's covid-19 coverage www.bmj.com/coronavirus