The first person received a shot Monday morning in a large-scale test of a vaccine candidate being developed by biotechnology company Moderna in collaboration with the U.S. government.
The experimental vaccination marks a much anticipated milestone: the official launch of a series of massive U.S. clinical trials that will test the effectiveness and safety of experimental vaccines in 30,000 participants, half receiving the shot and half receiving a placebo.
Moderna executives project that the company will have enough evidence to ask regulators to determine whether the vaccine is effective by this fall or late this year, company president Stephen Hoge testified before Congress last week. Moderna is planning to produce 500 million doses of the vaccine per year, with the possibility of making 1 billion doses annually in 2021. Over the weekend, the U.S. government committed $472 million to support the large trial, doubling the federal investment in Modernaâs vaccine candidate.
Nurse Kath Olmstead, right, gives volunteer Melissa Harting, of Harpersville, N.Y., an injection as the worldâs biggest study of a possible COVID-19 vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., gets underway Monday, July 27 in Binghamton, N.Y. AP Photo/Hans Pennink
Several other vaccines have already begun large trials, including two candidates from Chinese companies and one being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca that is being tested in Brazil and South Africa and will soon start U.S. trials.
âWe are indebted to the participants and investigators who now begin the work of the [Coronavirus Efficacy] study itself,â Moderna chief executive StĂ©phane Bancel said in a statement. âWe look forward to this trial demonstrating the potential of our vaccine to prevent COVID19, so that we can defeat this pandemic.â
President Donald Trump will seek to put a spotlight on efforts to rapidly develop a coronavirus vaccine with a visit Monday to a North Carolina facility working on components of one of the candidates.
Trump is scheduled to take a tour and receive a briefing during his afternoon stop at Bioprocess Innovation Center at Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Morrisville, N.C. The facility, part of Research Triangle Park, is involved in the production of a vaccine candidate developed by Novavax, which was awarded a contract worth $1.6 billion by the federal government earlier this month.
In recent weeks, Trump has sought to cast himself as more engaged in efforts to combat covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, as polls have shown growing percentages of Americans disapproving of his handling of the pandemic.
Vice President Mike Pence also plans to focus on vaccines Monday with a trip to Florida, where he will participate in what is being billed as a âroundtable on Phase 3 coronavirus vaccine trialsâ at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
As part of its Operation Warp Speed initiative, the Trump administration has pledged to develop a safe, effective vaccine as early as the end of the year.
Trumpâs trip Monday will also carry political overtones. Recent polls have shown presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading Trump in North Carolina, a battleground state that Trump carried in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Florida is another battleground state where polls have showed Trump lagging Biden.
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The Washington Postâs John Wagner contributed to this report.
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