The big pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer both started large-scale trials for COVID-19 vaccines yesterday.
Each company plans to blind test 30,000 volunteers-- and some will be in San Antonio, Laredo and McAllen.
Dr. John Carlo with the governor's COVID-19 Task Force says the vaccines show promise, but they'll be different than what we're used to. For example, he says you likely won't have to get the Coronavirus vaccine every year like we do with influenza.
"The influenza virus changes quite readily and rapidly, so every year it's a different virus that the vaccine itself doesn't match," Carlo says. "We don't think that this is going to be the same problem with Coronavirus at this point."
If proven safe, experts say a vaccine could be available in limited quantities by the end of the year.
Moderna and Pfizer are the first companies in the US to enter Phase 3 clinical testing on a COVID-19 vaccine. Carlo says the milestone is definitely good news, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
"We're going to have to start planning for the early distribution, when we're simply not going to have enough [vaccines] for everybody that needs one," Carlo says. "We're going to have to come up with some allocation strategies, particularly early on, when we have very limited supplies on hand."