On May 26, 2020, Merck and and IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization dedicated to addressing urgent, unmet global health challenges, announced a new collaboration to develop an investigational vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 to be used for the prevention of COVID-19.

This vaccine candidate will use the recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) technology that is the basis for Merckﾒs Ebola Zaire virus vaccine, ERVEBOﾮ (Ebola Zaire Vaccine, Live), which was the first rVSV vaccine approved for use in humans.