Dawn Baker was “a little nervous” but “very excited” on Monday when she made history.
That morning, Baker, CNN’s AFFILIATED news anchor in Savannah, Georgia, was the first volunteer to receive an injection in the first Phase 3 clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine in the United States.
The many lives lost and affected by the coronavirus pandemic led Baker to volunteer.
“It’s really, for me, very exciting to be that user who can save lives. It’s very sad to hear from others who have lost their lives for this,” Baker told CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen at Meridian Clinical Research. online page in Savannah on Monday.
According to the Johns Hopkins University case count in the United States, there are more than 4.2 million cases of coronavirus in the United States and at least 146,935 people have died.
“I never thought I’d do something like that, ” said Baker. “I just hope those are very, very smart results. I know that many other people do many other vaccine trials.”
The race for the Covid-19 vaccine continues worldwide. Globally, at least 25 applicants for the Covid-19 vaccine are recently being tested in humans, according to the World Health Organization. Five of them are in Phase 3, the maximum complex level before a vaccine is released.
The experimental vaccine covid-19 tested in the Phase 3 trial in the United States evolved through the Modern Biotechnology Corporation and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of the National Institutes of Health. The trial will be conducted at 89 U.S. study sites, according to NIAID.
It is “the fastest from the moment a virus was known, a pathogen, until it entered a phase 3 trial, literally in the history of vacunology in the United States at least, and perhaps even in the world,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID. said Monday on a NIH occasion on Facebook Live.
The Phase 3 trial is expected to recruit approximately 30,000 adult volunteers to assess whether the Modern/NIH vaccine can safely save it symptomatic Covid-19 after two doses, among other results. Volunteers will get two injections of one hundred micrograms from the vaccine or a placebo approximately 28 days apart. Researchers and participants won’t know who won the vaccine.
Pfizer and his BioNTech ner also filed a complex vaccine trial on Monday, giving doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccine to 4 volunteers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York from a Phase 2/3 study, according to a URMC spokesman.
Baker did not report whether he had won the vaccine or a placebo. Moments after receiving her hit, Baker told CNN Cohen that “it was painless” and ended before she knew it.
At Savannah’s study site, Baker had the idea of his colleague Lyndsey Gough, who is among those affected by coronavirus.
Gough, a journalist at NEWC WTOC station, went from reporting on coronavirus to positive for Covid-19 in late June. Gough, 27, spent 11 days in the hospital fighting the disease.
“It really just broke my heart because she’s such a young, strong, energetic young lady who is just on fire about what she does, and to see her afterwards, she was so weak, and to also know what could have happened to her. She lost her appendix because of Covid,” Baker said, adding that Gough is now at home.
Monday was not the first time Baker volunteered for medical cause.
Baker participated in a medical project to Ghana with the Goodness and Mercy Foundation, according to his biography on the WTOC news station website. He returned from this project in June 2006. The following year, in February 2007, she participated in a medical project in Guatemala with a Faith In Practice organization. A few months later, in September, he spent a week running with the Goodness-Mercy Foundation in Ajalli, Nigeria.
“I am convinced that we are all guilty for making our component in the quality of life of our fellowmen,” Baker wrote in his biography.
Now Baker is not only making history as the first volunteer to get a vaccine in the Phase 3 trial, but also as a black volunteer in the trial.
Black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Doctors are running to engage racially diverse volunteers in the study of the vaccine.
“African-Americans have a history, by a clever explanation of why, of being involved in medicine. In the past, we’ve been subjected to all sorts of experiments where we didn’t know what was going on,” Baker said. For example, in Tuskegee’s notorious experiment, black men underwent a syphilis test without their consent and were not presented with penicillin to treat their disease.
“I’ve heard from a lot of friends and even relatives who have said that, you know, I probably wouldn’t be the first user to receive this vaccine. I don’t need to be the guinea pig. I’ll wait and see what happens first. “They are very suspicious. So, maybe since I was at least ambitious enough to get ahead, I could replace that, and eventually it could save their lives,” Baker said. “I hope just seeing my face will help them change their minds about it.”
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