Daily US Times: A US government official has confirmed that the first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus will receive an experimental dose on Monday.
The government official who spoke about this asked to remain anonymous.
The experiment will take place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle and the trial is funded by The National Institutes of Health.
Health officials say it will take 12-18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine.
Testing will begin with 45 young and healthy volunteers with different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna Inc, but there is no chance the participants could get infected from the shots because they don’t contain the virus.
The main goal of this experiment is to see if the vaccine has worrisome side effects, setting the stage for larger tests.
As COVID-19 cases continue to grow around the world, dozens of research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine.
Some researchers even trying to develop a temporary vaccine, such as shots that might guard people’s health a month or two at a time while longer-lasting protection is developed.
Meanwhile, mainland China reported 16 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, 4 local and 12 imported and 14 new deaths as of Sunday, bringing the country’s total number of cases to 80,860. There are now more cases outside China than there are inside.
You may read: Coronavirus: Most cases now outside China, deaths pass 6,000 worldwide
