As per reports in Hindustan Times, the first Covid-19 vaccine tested in the U.S. boosted people’s immune systems, researchers reported Tuesday – as the shots got assurance to begin key final testing.
The vaccine, initiated by Fauci’s colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will set to enter its most crucial step around July 27. On Tuesday, researchers reported that they awaited findings from the first 45 volunteers who rolled up their sleeves back in March.
The early volunteers developed neutralizing antibodies in their bloodstream which are the key to blocking infection compared to those who survived Covid-19, the research team opined in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Hopefully, the government shares good news around the end of the year and set us free from this pandemic, for good. However, the vaccine requires two doses, a month apart.
No serious side-effects have been reported so far. On the other hand, more than half the study participants complained of flu-like reactions to the shots that aren’t abnormal with other developing vaccines — fatigue, headache, chills, fever and pain at the injection site. Three participants were given the highest dose, whose reactions turned out to be more severe which aren’t pursued.
Of course, some of the reactions are quite similar to coronavirus symptoms but they are lasting for a day, occurring right after vaccination, researchers opined.
“Small price to pay for protection against Covid,” said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a vaccine expert not engaged in the study and called the early results “a good first step”.
“It would be wonderful. But that assumes everything’s working right on schedule,” Schaffner warned.
Tuesday’s outcomes consisted of younger adults. The first-step testing later was extended to include dozens of matured adults, the age group most vulnerable to Covid-19. The results aren’t out yet but are being evaluated by the regulators strongly. Fauci concluded final testing will include matured adults, as well as people with severe health conditions that makes them more susceptible to contract the virus.
Nearly two dozen possible Covid-19 vaccines are in various stages of testing across the world.
The 30,000 person research will turn out to be the world’s largest study of a potential Covid-19 vaccine so far. The government aims to plan similar large studies of the Oxford candidate and another by Johnson & Johnson. Meanwhile, Pfizer Inc. is conducting its own huge study separately.
People think “this is a race for one winner. Me, I’m cheering every one of them on,” said Fauci, who directs NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“We need multiple vaccines. We need vaccines for the world, not only for our own country.”