Two vaccine experts said Friday that minority communities in the U.S. are most severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, but questions remain whether they have the highest access to a potential vaccine.
Another question: Dr. John Mascola, director of the NIH National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Friday that they will participate in trials of minorities if they trust the government sufficiently. .
“Just as we thought about learning how to test vaccines and whether they are working… the question is, can we do enough for us to access large parts of the population and can it be accessible and affordable? Said Mascola.
Some contexts: As with the development of a coronavirus vaccine, the U.S. government has a number of agencies to decide during the development process. For example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they would make suggestions as to who would take it.
“But when the U.S. government is included in a substantial part of the fund for effort, there are provisions that this vaccine will be ready for distribution to the U.S. government, as in the U.S.” I said.
Mascola said the government should help make it affordable because it provides funding for the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
But before this happens, clinical studies involving thousands of people are needed to decide whether a vaccine candidate is effective.
“We are working with HHS and predictive analytics to monitor that the virus can match where we do vaccination campaigns, and also to make sure we register the highest-risk populations,” said Larry. Corey, a leading expert in virology, immunology and vaccine development, and a member of the vaccine and infectious disease department of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
While police brutality and national protests over the US judicial system continue towards the second week, vaccine developers may have a harder time convincing colorful people to participate in the trials. “And frankly, one of these new concerns,” Corey said to the town hall.
“Our under-served populations are Black and Spanish. We are entering as a U.S. government agency, and whether these events in the past few weeks will affect our ability to build medical trust with what we have to do with community access, this becomes a really central issue for us to be able to record the people most affected by Covid-19. ”
“It shows health inequalities in our country,” Corey said.
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