Data on the effectiveness of the Moderna vaccine looks promising, but the trial will continue for months to come. Some of that research is happening at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem.
Moderna enrolled around 30,000 participants at about 100 sites across the country. Over 300 of those volunteers are based here in the Triad.
It's part of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's public-private initiative to develop a safe vaccine as quickly as possible.
Chief of Infectious Diseases at Wake Forest Baptist, Dr. John Sanders, says there are benefits to the gene-based vaccine being tested in this trial.
“Not only does it give us hope to have effective vaccines against COVID, it may be a launching point for us to have much more effective vaccines for things like influenza, even some of the cancers that they are making vaccines for might be dramatically improved by this technology,” he says.
Sanders anticipates Moderna will submit a full data set to the Food and Drug Administration within weeks in order to obtain an emergency use authorization for the vaccine.
The study will last a total of two years, with researchers regularly evaluating participants to make sure it's safe long term. Wake Forest Baptist will also begin a Johnson & Johnson vaccine study this week.
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