A key facet of the global mad scramble by Pfizer, Moderna and other pharma groups to develop a viable coronavirus vaccine is the recruitment of tens of thousands of volunteers willing to participate in clinical trials.
A key facet of the global mad scramble by Pfizer, Moderna and other pharma groups to develop a viable coronavirus vaccine is the recruitment of tens of thousands of volunteers willing to participate in clinical trials.
AFP's correspondent in Miami, Leila Macor, took part in such a trial organized by US biotech firm Moderna, which announced Monday that its experimental vaccine was nearly 95 percent effective.
Why did Macor, who suffers from asthma, decide to be one of Moderna's 30,000 test subjects? Here, she recounts her experience, which began just weeks after her own father died of Covid-19 in Chile.
Tough Decision
Three weeks before Pfizer and Moderna launched their coronavirus vaccine clinical trials in late July, my father passed away -- alone, as so many have in this crisis.
As our family lived through the trauma, and said goodbye as best we could, I was confronting another stark and dangerous reality -- Miami was becoming a major US virus hotspot, and my job was to cover the story.
But my life has been irrevocably changed. I lost my dad, and I have asthma, which could lead to serious complications if I were to be infected.
The idea of taking action to help bring this deadly medical emergency under control offered me some inner peace.
Let me be clear, this was a totally personal decision that had nothing to do with work.
I talked it over with friends and family, who helped me decide that any possible side effects from the trial would not be worse than getting Covid-19.
So I took the plunge.
Two days after writing a story about the start of phase 3 trials in Florida, I once again knocked on the door of a lab -- this time as a potential subject.
Research Centers of America, located in the Miami suburb of Hollywood, was working on trials for Pfizer and Moderna, alternating every other day.
Dozens of other labs were recruiting volunteers across the United States. Anyone was eligible, as long as they were in high-risk jobs: doctors, taxi drivers, grocery store workers... and reporters.
I made an appointment for a Tuesday in mid-August. That happened to be a Moderna day.
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