More than 100,000 people have volunteered to help test the effects of the coronavirus vaccine on their bodies, showing an optimistic sign for the vaccine’s testing phase, reports USA Today.
What’s going on:
- More than 107,000 people signed up to participate in the COVID-19 tests.
- Moderna, Pfizer BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Inovio are preparing for the phase three trials, which would require 30,000 participants each, a total of 120,000 participants, reports USA Today.
- Experts said the speed of the volunteers is a good sign.
- “That is why we are optimistic that we will be able to register the trials in an expeditious manner. I think we can do what we have to do, “said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for USA Today.
- “I would say that it is very encouraging at this stage to have 107,000 volunteers,” said Barry Bloom, a professor of public health at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, according to USA Today.
Scientists continue to search for volunteers
- As I reported to Deseret.com, the best scientists are still looking for healthy volunteers for the COVID-19 test trials. More than 100 scientists, including 15 Nobel Prize laureates, signed an open letter to Dr. Francis Collins, chief of the US National Institutes of Health, for “challenge trials” in humans to help accelerate the vaccine process.
- “If test trials can safely and effectively speed up the vaccine development process, then there is a formidable presumption in favor of its use, which would require a very compelling ethical justification to overcome it,” according to the published letter.
- The US federal government recently launched a new website that gives Americans the option to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine, which I wrote about for Deseret.com.
- You can visit that page at coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org.
