Coronavirus vaccine trial starts today, says US govt official

A clinical
trial evaluating a vaccine designed to protect against the new coronavirus will
begin Monday, according to a government official.

The first
participant in the trial will receive the experimental vaccine on Monday, the
official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the trial has not
been publicly announced yet.

The National
Institutes of Health is funding the trial, which is taking place at the Kaiser
Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, the official said.

Public
health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any
potential vaccine.

Testing will
begin with 45 young, healthy volunteers with different doses of shots
co-developed by NIH and Moderna Inc. There’s no chance participants could get
infected from the shots, because they don’t contain the virus itself. The goal
is purely to check that the vaccines show no worrisome side effects, setting
the stage for larger tests.

Dozens of
research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine as COVID-19
cases continue to grow. Importantly, they’re pursuing different types of
vaccines shots developed from new technologies that not only are faster to
produce than traditional inoculations but might prove more potent.

Some
researchers even aim for temporary vaccines, such as shots that might guard
people’s health a month or two at a time while longer-lasting protection is
developed.

For most
people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as
fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing
health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.

The
worldwide outbreak has sickened more than 156,000 people and left more than
5,800 dead. The death toll in the United States is more than 50, while
infections neared 3,000 across 49 states and the District of Columbia.

The vast
majority of people recover.

According to
the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two
weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three weeks to six weeks
to recover.