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Coronavirus: One of the crucial moments in the frantic race to develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus is the recruitment of tens of thousands of people, ready to help in clinical trials.
One of these volunteers was the correspondent of the French Agency in Miami, Leila Macor.
Leila participated in Moderna’s phase 3 clinical trials, the American biotech company that announced Monday that its experimental vaccine is almost 95% effective.
Why this journalist, who suffers from asthmadecided to become a guinea pig? She recounted her experience in the first person, which began a few weeks after her father succumbed to Covid-19.
A story in two installments
“My father died of Covid in Chile, three weeks before the clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna began in late July.
He died alone, just like people who succumb to this virus. Only, in his speech, he was convinced that he had been kidnapped.
As my brothers, my mother and I struggled to accept the loss, I was faced with another reality: Miami and Florida in general, was the new focus of the virus that killed my father. And my job was to cover this report and the other deaths.
The idea of doing something, even a little bit, to help overcome this scourge that killed ours and upset our lives was a cleansing.
I talked about it with friends and family. They all helped me conclude that the risk of a possible side effect of the vaccine, for an asthmatic like me, would be less than the risk of getting sick from the virus.
And I decided to participate.
Two days after writing a report for the French Agency for the Opening of the Third Phase of Clinical Trials in Florida, I knocked on the laboratory door again, but this time as a study subject.
Vaccine or placebo?
The Research Centers of America in Hollywood, north of Miami, participated in the Pfizer and Moderna trials. One day one, another the next. I went on a Tuesday: Moderna happened.
At the same time, dozens of other centers in the country were also recruiting volunteers. Anyone could run, as long as they had a high probability of getting infected: doctors, taxi drivers, journalists.
They put a sticker with my name on it and took me to a booth, where they explained what I would later read in a 22-page document. That were two deliveries. That they would pay us $ 2,400 for the two years that the test will last.
They told me what side effects should i expect (pain at the injection site, fever, chills). That we were 30,000, divided into two groups: half would receive the vaccine, the rest a placebo.
“Even we don’t know who is who,” the nurse told me when I tried to find out if she was taking the placebo. Only Moderna would know by analyzing the data.
“What happens if I do an antibody test?” I asked.
The nurse replied that it would not necessarily give the correct result.
“The uncertainty will kill me,” I exclaimed.
The nurse raised her head and said to me, very seriously: “Fake drugs are as important as vaccines. It is impossible to do the test without a control group. You will help humanity, whatever your team.”
I felt guilty for being annoying and stopped asking.
An ordinary Tuesday
They drew my blood, filled six or eight vials, I lost count. They did a pregnancy test. And they insisted that it was necessary for me to take contraceptives: “we still do not know the effects of the vaccine on the fetus,” they repeated.
Then two people came with the vaccine in a refrigerator. Or the placebo, maybe.
They laughed when I asked them to let me take a photo of the injection. What for me was a historic moment, for them it was just any Tuesday.
It was not painful. Then they took me to a waiting room, where they watched me for half an hour. Three or four volunteers were looking at their phones. A Cuban nurse wore a cape, Superman’s red beret.
“What is the cape for?” I asked her.
“Because here we are all heroes, honey,” he replied.
They gave me a bunch of stickers, a t-shirt and a mask, all with the slogan “Covid Warriors” and a sketch showing a superhero fighting the virus.
They also downloaded an application to my mobile phone, especially for research, where I had to record my temperature and symptoms.
When I get home, the injection site hurt a bit. Did they really give me the vaccine? I spent the next three days searching the internet to see if injecting saline (from which the placebo is made) could cause pain. Without finding a clear answer.
My second dose was given to me a month later, in mid-September. The pain was more intense this time too. For two days, the injection site was warm and swollen.
A few days later I realized that my participation in the clinical trial was a form of crying. For my father and for the crazy world that the virus left us.
“No matter how small it was, that was the only weapon he could use.”
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