As pictures of a 90-year-old UK woman becoming the first person to be given a Covid jab were beamed around the world, hopes for a coronavirus vaccine by Christmas have become a little more realistic.
John Yang Photo: Supplied
But before New Zealanders roll up their sleeves for a jab, thousands of volunteers have already done that for clinical trials including patient 232.
His name is John Yang, a journalist and correspondent for the Public Broadcasting Newshour in America.
He joked to Jesse Mulligan he wanted to be part of the Moderna vaccine trial for purely self-interested reasons because he wanted to get the vaccine early and that he’s pleased he was part of it because the results have been good, he believes.
But he says he was also the ideal candidate for the trial.
“There were a couple of factors, number one I’m Asian, these clinical trials need a lot of people of colour to test, they have been largely very white in the past and they want to make sure it’s safe for all kinds of people, also the illness itself has been people of colour in the States particularly hard.
“Plus, I’ve got some underlying conditions, number one I’m 62, I’m a little bit older… but also I have asthma and I have high blood pressure and they wanted to make sure it was safe for people with those conditions.”
Yang was one of 30,000 Americans to volunteer for the trial and results from a late-stage study show it was 94.1 percent effective with no serious safety concerns, Moderna.
Of the 196 volunteers who contracted Covid-19, 185 had received a placebo and 11 got the vaccine. Moderna reported 30 severe cases, all in the placebo group, which means the vaccine was 100 percent effective against severe cases.
Yang believes, though is not 100 percent sure, that he got the vaccine.
“They told me one of the reasons the scientists in charge of this study weren’t going to be in the room when I got the shot is because they could tell the difference, because the real vaccine was more viscous than the placebo.
“So I was hoping that I would feel my arm get heavy when I got the shot and I was hoping that there would be some sort of reaction, immediate reaction, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed, I got it in the morning, I was a little disappointed that in the evening I felt no reaction whatsoever and in a perverse was felt happy and felt good the next morning when I woke up and was a little achy… and then delighted later on in the afternoon when I felt a little feverish.”
Yang said the side-effects for the first shot were very mild and lasted two to three days.
He said the second shot, however, produced slightly stronger symptoms that appeared and disappeared quicker than the first.
Since finishing the trial, Yang’s been screened to take part in a study to discover what antibodies he developed against Covid-19, as well as the level of antibodies he’s developed compared to others who have had Covid-19 without the vaccine, all adding to his theory that he didn’t receive the placebo.
Despite this, he says he still wears a mask when out working and tries to keep his distance in large crowds as the number of Covid cases in the US spikes to 200,000 cases a day.
He says the latest wave has the country worried about what will happen at Christmas time.
And while reticent to tell people how to live their own lives, he says getting the vaccine was a no-brainer.
“Given the choice between what I went through after these shots, and the worst of it was that I was in bed for half a day, and the risks of what could happen if I got a severe case of Covid-19, personally I don’t think it’s a close call at all.
“What I went through after the shot is nothing compared to what I could go through if I got Covid-19.”
