The United States first tested Covid-19 vaccine on humans today

A first American volunteer will receive a test vaccine against the corona virus on Monday, which means around tonight until tomorrow morning in Vietnam. The official information was cited by a government official.

Testing sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will take place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Medical Research Institute in Seattle. The source of the AP said that the goal of this first trial was to assess the safety and potential side effects of the vaccine.

Anonymous volunteers will not be actively infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus to test immunity after injection.

Previously, public health officials said it took at least 12-18 months to test any potential vaccines for the Covid-19 epidemic. However, the process may be shortened in some situations if the disease is complicated, in which regulatory authorities may allow the accelerated clinical trial process.

The NIH vaccine was originally scheduled for testing in April but is now half a month ahead of schedule.

According to the Associated Press, the first vaccine test against the strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the Covid-19 epidemic in the US will be conducted with 45 young, healthy volunteers. They will be injecting a vaccine developed under the collaboration of NIH and biotechnology company Moderna Inc.

Each group of volunteers will receive different doses of vaccine to assess its potential side effects. No one will be injected, inhaled, or exposed to the real virus. This initial test only assesses safety and paves the way for future vaccine efficacy trials.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which infected more than 169,000 people, in more than 100 countries and territories, killing more than 6,000 of them, dozens of research groups around the world are racing to produce. Get a vaccine to stop it.

Last month, a team at the University of Queensland in Australia announced they had developed a potential vaccine for Covid-19 and began testing it on animals.

Professor Paul Young, principal of the University of Queensland School of Chemistry and Molecular Biology, said his team had a total of 20 people. All have worked tirelessly to speed up the research process, identifying and copying an important protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to use as a vaccine against it.

There are many vaccines that target the corona virus, with different strategies. Some research groups are aiming to produce a temporary vaccine, meaning that it will only help people to protect their health within one or two months before Covid-19. Other research groups, meanwhile, tend to have a stronger vaccine, which may have long-lasting effects.

In addition to the Moderna vaccine that will begin testing today, Inovio, an American pharmaceutical company, said it will also launch human trials of the vaccine against its SARS-CoV-2 virus. in April.

The vaccine will be administered to dozens of volunteers at the University of Pennsylvania and a testing center in Kansas City, Missouri. After that, similar tests will be conducted in China and Korea.

" Even if these initial safety tests go well, you still need from one year to a year and a half before any vaccine can be ready for widespread use ," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an NIH unit.

But that will still be a record pace. Previously, to develop vaccines, for example for Ebola, it took us decades. Manufacturers need to ensure their vaccines are effective and safe.

With the current mortality rate of Covid-19 at only 3%, it would be a disaster if the vaccine was developed effectively, but exposes people to face many dangerous side effects. especially when it will be rolled out across the board.

Last week, US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency and opened a $ 50 billion budget to help the United States tackle the disease, including efforts to boost vaccine development. He said the research process is being carried out very quickly and he hopes to see a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 soon.

Right now, Covid-19 is still considered to be a disease without specific treatment. In China, scientists have tried combining a number of anti-HIV drugs with the hope that it can also inhibit and fight off the new strain of corona virus.

A drug called remdesivir is also being tested against SARS-CoV-2. It has previously succeeded in inhibiting and preventing the Ebola outbreak from recurring in West Africa. Scientists are testing whether remdesivir can do the same with Covid-19.

Remdesivir is currently being tested on humans at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Several US citizens infected with the corona virus on Diamond Princess in Japan have also been tested for the drug.

For most people, the corona virus only causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough.

But for some, especially the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease, Covid-19 can be a really dangerous disease, because the virus will attack their lungs, people with weakened immune systems, cause respiratory failure, even death.

The death rate of Covid-19 is 10 times higher than that of seasonal flu, at about 1-3% depending on the region. However, the World Health Organization says the vast majority of patients with Covid-19 will recover. People with mild illness will recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three weeks to six weeks to recover.

* To better understand the new corona virus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic, let's take the following test:

Refer to AP, Independent