US starts first human testing for coronavirus vaccine

The United States has started the first testing in healthy humans of an experimental vaccine to fight the corronavirus.

Four people were vaccinated Monday and four more will be vaccinated Wednesday at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle using a vaccine produced by Cambridhge, Massachusetts-based Moderna Therapeutics. The vaccine cannot cause the coronavirus, also known as Covid-19, but contains a harmless genetic code copied from the virus that causes the disease.

The city was selected before the US had any known of any coronavirus cases, not because of the outbreak that erupted there, officials said. Washington state has been hard hit by the virus, with more than 670 cases to date.

The first person to be given a shot on Monday was a 43-year-old mother-of-two from Seattle. "This is an amazing opportunity for me to do something," Jennifer Haller told The Associated Press.

The testing was announced Monday by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). After the participants recive the shots, there will be a pause to monitor them and then more participants will receive injections, said Dr Barney Graham, deputy director of the institute's Vaccine Research Center.

The trial was "launched in record speed," Dr Anthony Fauci, the institute's director, said in a statement.

Despite the rapid progress, even if the vaccine is proved safe and effective against the virus, it will not be available for at least a year.

Work on the vaccine started in January, as soon as Chinese scientists posted the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus on the internet. Researchers at Moderna Therapeutics and the NIAID identified part of the sequence that codes for a spike-like protein on the surface of the virus that attaches to human cells, helping the virus to invade them. The vaccine cannot cause Covid-19 but contains a harmless genetic code copied from the virus that causes the disease.

Other countires and many companies are also trying to manufacture a coronavirus vaccine. Moderna is the first to conduct a clinical trial.

On Tuesday, China approved the start of clinical trials on a coronavirus vaccine. The National Medical Products Administration approved the tests for the vaccine, which was created by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus cases started in January.

The infectious disease institute has been working with Moderna because its RNA approach can produce vaccine very quickly, said Graham. RNA technology copies the genetic code of the virus instead of the actual virus.

The participants in the Moderna test will be followed for a year, but Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, said that safety data would be available a few weeks after the injections were given. He said if the vaccine then appears safe, Moderna will ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to move ahead to the next phase of testing before the first stage is finished. The second round of testing, to measure efficacy as well as to verify safety, will include many more participants.

A nonprofit group, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness A nonprofit group, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, helped pay to manufacture the vaccine for the trial.

Moderna has nine other vaccines in various stages of development, including several for viruses that cause respiratory illnesses.

The company is already buying new equipment to produce millions of doses if its vaccine is approved, and Bancel said the company was taking a risk because neither safety nor efficacy has been proved yet.

"Humans are suffering and time is of the essence," he said. "Every day matters. We have taken these decisions to take the risk, because we believe it is the right thing to do.''