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More than 100,000 people have volunteered to help test the effects of the coronavirus vaccine on their body, showing an optimistic sign for the test phase for the vaccine, USA Today reports.
What’s happening:
- More than 107,000 people signed up to become involved in COVID-19 testing.
- Moderna, Pfizer BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Inovio are all preparing for phase three trials, which would require 30,000 participants each — a total of 120,000 participants, USA Today reports.
- Experts said the quickness of volunteers is a good sign.
- “That’s why we’re optimistic that we’re going to be able to get the trials enrolled in an expeditious way. I think we can do what we need to do,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, per USA Today.
- “I would say it’s very encouraging at this stage to have 107,000 volunteers,” said Barry Bloom, professor of public health at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, according to USA Today.
Scientists continue to search for volunteers
- As I reported for Deseret.com, top scientists are still searching for healthy volunteers for the COVID-19 trial tests. More than 100 scientists — including 15 Nobel laureates — signed an open letter to Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., for human “challenge trials” to help speed along the process of the vaccine.
- “If challenge trials can safely and effectively speed the vaccine development process then there is a formidable presumption in favor of their use, which would require a very compelling ethical justification to overcome,” according to the published letter.
- The U.S. federal government recently released a new website that gives Americans an option to sign up for COVID-19 vaccine, which I wrote about for Deseret.com.
- You can visit that page at coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org.