USC’s Keck School is looking for volunteers for COVID-19 vaccination

LOS ANGELES (KABC) – USC’s Keck School of Medicine, together with the Vernon Department of Health, is enrolling volunteers in a Phase 3 clinical trial to test an experimental vaccine for COVID-19.

Keck Medicine of USC is looking for 500 volunteers for the trial – in particular participants who are most at risk of contracting the virus, including those in Black and brown communities, those over 65 and factory workers.

Researchers are looking to register 30,000 people nationwide and 500 in Los Angeles.

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The trial will operate from two locations: Keck Hospital of USC in the Boyle Heights are from Los Angeles, and a satellite location in Vernon.

Keck Medicine of USC will test the safety and efficacy of an experimental vaccine known as AZD1222 produced by AstraZeneca, a Cambridge, UK based pharmaceutical company, funded by the US Biomedical Advanced Authority and Development Authority and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The Vernon Health Department is proud to partner with Keck Medicine of USC on this critically important medical study that, if successful, could result in a safe and effective vaccine to give hundreds of millions of Americans immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19 which has killed nearly 170,000 men, women and children in the U.S. more than 760,000 people worldwide, ” said Fredrick Agyin, director of the Vernon Health and Environmental Control Department.

“We look forward to working closely with Vernon’s business community and leaders of organized labor to recruit the volunteers needed to participate in what could be an enormous turning point in the battle for public health against COVID-19.” ‘

More information can be found at www.cityofvernon.org/departments/health.

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City News Service contributed to this report.