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UM School of Medicine testing booster shot for Pfizer vaccine
Now that the COVID-19 vaccine distribution is well underway, pharmaceutical companies are beginning to test booster shots.
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The University of Maryland School of Medicine is playing an integral role in those trials.
The UM School of Medicine injected some of the first people in the country during phase one of the Pfizer trial last May. Over the last couple of weeks, they've been using those same volunteers to test a next generation shot.
“We're not sure that we do need one, but we're getting prepared,” Dr. Kirsten Lyke, of the UM School of Medicine said.
And the UM School of Medicine is, again, playing a major role in the clinical trials for a booster shot to the Pfizer vaccine. They're using the first trial participants, injected with the experimental shot last May, to do the testing.
“Part one is that these volunteers will get the same shot that rolled out to everyone. The next step will be to test a variant that Pfizer has in the works,” Lyke said.
They're testing now because no one is sure how long the immunity from the first shots will last, and we might also need a booster to address some of the variants now circulating. Public health experts agree it's a smart step to take even if it’s never needed.
“I don't necessarily think we have to deploy the booster until we kind of cross the threshold of someone who's vaccinated getting hospitalized with one of the variants, so I think it’s important to have this ready to go if necessary, but I don't think we've crossed the threshold where this is absolutely going to be needed because even in the face of the variants, our vaccines do very good at preventing severe disease hospitalization and death,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said.
The UM School of Medicine finished dosing their patients this week. Researchers will follow their progress by checking their blood for antibodies at specific intervals.
“From our experience it seems to be really well tolerated people seem to be doing fine with it and there's been nothing unexpected at this point,” Lyke said.
Preliminary data won't be available for several months, but researchers hope this trial will give science the upper hand over this ever-evolving virus and pandemic.
“We just need to prepare for any possibility in the future. Hopefully, we won't need boosters but if we do, I think we'll have the evidence behind us to know how to implement it,” Lyke said.
Moderna has also started testing a booster shot for its vaccine.
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