Despite difficulties, enrolling minorities for testing with a coronavirus vaccine is over

Moderna aims to recruit 30,000 volunteers in its Phase 3 trial, and in a tweet Friday evening revealed that 18% of the 13,194 volunteers enrolled so far were minorities, which included the company “Black as African American, Latinx, American Indian and Alaskan Native”.

Fauci told CNN earlier this week that he wants to see minorities enrolled in coronavirus vaccine studies at levels that are at least double their percentages in the population. This means that at least 66.4% of the volunteers would come from those four groups.

According to census data, 18.5% of the U.S. population is Latino, 13.4% is black, and 1.3% is American Indian and Alaskan Native.

Fauci said he wants minorities to be enrolled at more than double their percentages in the population because minorities are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. He made it clear that this number was a goal, not a requirement.

He said participation of minorities in the trials “would be aimed at meeting the burden of the disease. We would like to do that – whether we get there or not, I do not know.”

Minority representation is also important, as the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine may be different for minority groups than for White people, and thus a substantial percentage of participants must come from those groups.

The company said it was trying.

“The clinical research sites, with the support of the company, work within their local communities to reach a diverse population. Together with collaborators, the company hopes to achieve a shared coal that the participants in the [vaccine trial] are representative of the communities with the highest risk for COVID-19 and of our diverse society. ”

In its tweet on Friday night, Moderna also announced that the company had recruited 13,194 participants so far. At that rate, the company will easily enroll 30,000 participants beginning in mid-September.

However, Fauci said that if the right percentages of minorities are not met by the time Moderna reaches 30,000 study subs, the subjects should remain recruited.

“We will continue until we get there. We may need to build more volunteers than that [30,000],” he said.