Inside the global race to develop and distribute the drugs that could end the COVID-19 pandemic.
in August, “is to ensure no delay in the handoff between FDA authorizing a vaccine and implementation of vaccination programs nationwide.” That all depends, of course, on whether the tens of thousands of volunteers receiving COVID-19 vaccine candidates in current studies develop strong immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 without serious side effects.
Kelly takes her symptoms as a sign that the vaccine did its job and that her immune system is now primed to defend against SARS-CoV-2. Data from a subset of volunteers in the first phase of the studies seem to support that: the new antibodies they formed after getting vaccinated appeared to neutralize lab-based versions of SARS-CoV-2.
Because viruses are adept at infecting cells, they can be a useful vehicle for transporting other viruses to prime the body’s immune cells, as long as they are disabled first. Drug companies are building and testing vaccines against Ebola, influenza and RSV, among others, by Trojan-horsing genetic material from one virus inside the shell of another that isn’t able to cause disease, but questions remain about how safe such double–virus vaccines might be.
The trial, which AstraZeneca was expanding to include 50,000 people in the U.S., U.K., Brazil and South Africa, is currently suspended as researchers investigate whether an illness experienced by one of the study volunteers is related to the vaccine. The unexplained illness was reported as part of routine safety monitoring done by independent review boards that are part of each major vaccine trial to ensure that the new vaccines don’t cause more harm than good.
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