The first injection was given at 6:45 am
This is phase three for the experimental biotechnology company, Moderna, which works together with the National Institutes of Health.
In the coming months, they will enroll 30,000 volunteers at 89 locations, including one in Philadelphia.
The experimental vaccine has already been shown to be safe and to produce an immune response in previous studies.
But phase three is where they determine if it really works to protect against the virus. Half of the participants will receive two shots of the vaccine one month apart. The other half will receive two placebo injections. So it’s a blind study.
During a live chat on Twitter and Facebook on Monday, the president of Moderna said that although the vaccine was developed in record time, they have been working on the technology for more than a decade.
One of the first study volunteers also talked about why she signed up.
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