This archive report was first published on 15 July 2020.
Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Enters Final Stage Trial ¶
Published on July 15, 2020
Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine has entered its final stage trial, recruiting 30,000 participants in the US to test its safety and efficacy.
The Phase 3 trial will compare the vaccine's performance against a placebo, with half of the participants receiving a 100 microgram dose and the other half receiving a placebo.
According to Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the interim results from the first stages of the trial were "encouraging".
However, scientists caution that the first vaccines to come to market may not be the most effective or safest.
Moderna's vaccine uses genetic material, in the form of RNA, to encode the information needed to grow the virus's spike protein inside the human body, in order to trigger an immune response.
The spike protein is a part of the virus that it uses to invade human cells, but by itself the protein is relatively harmless.
More than half the participants in the trial experienced mild or moderate side effects, which is considered normal.
Experts say that more work is needed to evaluate the vaccine's safety, including making sure that it does not backfire by eventually making the immune system "tolerant" toward the real virus.
