Locals Join Thousands of Global COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Participants | Coronavirus

“I have always felt some responsibility to the community in general and to society as a whole to support clinical trials,” Trott said. “I’ve been involved in other exams, even when I was in medical school.”

Trott, like many other vaccines, is part of the Pfizer vaccine trial, which is a two-step process. The recipient receives the first shot and 21 days later the second shot. During and for the next few months, blood draws indicate the level of antibody the patient has. Half of the participants will be given a placebo and the other half will be vaccinated.

Trot doesn’t know what he was given, but I think it was a vaccine. He showed a local reaction at the injection point. This is often a sign of a real vaccine rather than a placebo.

The Pfizer vaccine for which Trott is involved in the test is in Phase III. For drugs and vaccines, the trial goes through a series of steps. If the number of participants is small, Phase I determines if something is safe and produces some immune system response.

Phase II is a larger version of the same concept, but still relatively small. If the vaccine or drug turns out to be safe and effective in the first two phases, it goes into Phase III. Thousands of people are hired during this phase and their effectiveness is extensively tested.

As a physician and member of the scientific community, Trot wanted to further research and develop vaccines. Most trials want someone in the city where the work is actually done so that participants can be tested for COVID-19 if they feel sick after receiving the vaccine. I will.

The Pfizer Trial runner in Denver was happy to bring him in because Trot has the ability to test in case he feels sick.

Another Jackson, philanthropist and former nurse, Anne Lurie, found that she was spending time between Jackson and Chicago, where research was underway, so she could take part in another exam.

“I just wanted to contribute to this in a concrete way,” says Lurie.

She is part of the Moderna trial, also in Phase III. Both the Moderna and Pfizer trial vaccines employ a relatively new technology called messenger RNA. The most basic RNA is the genetic code that causes cells to act in some way. Messenger RNA directs cells to produce certain types of proteins, which are part of the production of antibodies.

During a viral infection, cells react to part of the virus’s genetic code in antibody production, while messenger RNA vaccines stimulate that type of immune response without exposing the body to the complete virus.

“They don’t have to worry about making completely new viruses. They make only a small portion of the virus,” said Dr. Ken Cornell, a professor of biochemistry and vaccine development at Boise State University. It was. “They focus on making some of the viruses you need to get an immune response.”

Many vaccines use real viral substances to stimulate their immune response. By using messenger RNA, researchers do not have to expose the patient to the entire virus (that is, COVID-19 cannot be obtained from the virus), and the genetic material is easy to replicate, allowing mass production of vaccines. ..

“It’s very easy to assemble it in bulk, in bulk,” Cornell said. “Just synthesize on the lab machine.”

Scalability is a big advantage. The federal government has given pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars for vaccine research in exchange for millions of doses. Both Moderna (about $ 1 billion) and Pfizer ($ 1.9 billion) receive federal funding, according to the New York Times vaccine tracker.

Some manufacturers expect to complete Phase III trials next month or November, and Cornell University has shown that the vaccine may be available for limited use in January or February. I think that Production and distribution capacity are two major factors in determining how quickly a vaccine will spread, and perhaps more time is needed to produce the hundreds of millions of doses needed to protect only Americans. It will take.

Cornell University said healthcare professionals and high-risk populations are likely to enter the first distribution round in midwinter. This means that many people may not be vaccinated until spring or summer. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s director Robert Redfield told the Senate Health Education and Labor Pensions Commission last week that it would be “late second quarter, early third quarter” before the vaccine became widely available.

Heracles’ efforts to simply distribute millions of vaccines have been further complicated, most of which need to be kept below freezing, increasing distrust of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Herd immunity estimates range from at least 50% to 80%, so many people need either natural exposure or vaccination to stop the virus. However, according to a Pew Research study conducted in early September, 51% of Americans said they would “probably or surely” get the COVID-19 vaccine, which was 21 points lower than in May.

One concern is the rush of the vaccine development process, as most vaccines take 5 to 10 years from idea to distribution. The idea of ​​producing in less than a year may give the impression that the process is advanced.

Trott said he relies on the scientific community to scrutinize the results of each trial and approve vaccines accordingly. A professor at Cornell University at Boise State University took a similar position, stating that rapid vaccine development was not unusual.

“There are many precedents for rapid vaccination,” he said. “We get the flu vaccine every year. This year’s vaccine selection wasn’t made five years ago. They started last year.

“That’s why we already have an industrial machine to make influenza vaccines every year.”

For those who oppose such vaccines, Lully said she wants to relieve their worries.

“I think the way to change that is obviously to educate people who may not want to accept it, and only to reduce their fear of it, at least to some extent,” she says. I did.