Yahoo News Coronavirus vaccine trials on human subjects to start in United States
Clinical trials aiming to create a vaccine to protect against coronavirus in the US will start testing on their first human subject on Monday, a government official has revealed.
The volunteer will receive a dose of the experimental vaccine in the trials at Kaiser Permanente research facility in Washington state, as researchers across the globe scramble for a vaccine to fight covid-19.
On Saturday it was reported researchers at Imperial College London were hopeful they were also on track to create a vaccine after trials on mice.
However, public health officials in the US believe it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine.
In the Washington state trials, testing will carried out on 45 young and healthy volunteers, who will be given different doses of shots developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc, according to the Associated Press.
The volunteers will not get infected from the trials because the vaccine does not contain covid-19 itself.
Researchers are trying to establish if the vaccines have any side effects before they then expand their trials.
The National Institutes of Health is funding the trial, said the government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trials have not been publicly announced.
The death toll in the US stands at more than 50, with 3,000 cases confirmed overall since the outbreak began in January.
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