Healthpartners, the Minnesota-based health care provider, announced earlier this week a new clinical trial for a vaccine that could be used to combat coronavirus. Healthpartners is recruiting up to 1,500 adults to participate in Minnesota’s first phase three trial.
Also this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has told governors and health officials to be ready to distribute a possible coronavirus vaccine this November, according to new reports.
The Hill reports that Robert Redfield, director of the CDC, informed state officials in a letter last week that permits would soon be requested to build vaccine distribution centers.
Dr. David Hilden, Division Director for Hennepin Healthcare and co-host of WCCO's Healthy Matters, told Dave Lee that this is a large leap forward for a vaccince.
"The vaccines that have been developed so far have passed their phase one and two trials, which means they were found to be safe," Hilden told the WCCO Morning News. "They didn't hurt anybody right off the bat. And the side effects were tolerable because those are the two things you have to find out first, are they safe, and do people tolerate them. Now, the question is, do they actually work? Do they prevent COVID or do they make your COVID less severe? And so that's a phase three trial, and that's what typically takes tens of thousands of volunteers and many, many months."
Dr. Hilden explained how the trial will identify if the vaccine is effective and how quickly it could tell us if the vaccine could be widely used.
"They're going to be enrolling people where some people get the vaccine and some people get saltwater and nobody knows who is who, because it's all blinded," Hilden said. "Then they will monitor them probably for a year or two to see how well it works. Now, the hope is that we don't have to wait a year or two, that in a few months it'll be so clear that the vaccine works that we'll be able to give it to everybody by early 2021. That's the hope. I'm really encouraged by the work that they're (Healthpartners) doing and that we're doing right here in Minnesota."
Dave Lee also asked Dr. Hilden if it's normal for a vaccine to be developed so quickly.
"Vaccines take many years," Hilden said. "Usually, I think it's more like four, five, eight, ten years because these vaccines aren't universally accepted. People are skeptical sometimes. We have to make sure we get it right the first time."
Hilden also warns that the study must be driven by science, and avoid the temptation to speed up the process for other reasons.
"If we accelerate this for reasons other than the scientific process, we're in trouble because we don't want to approve some vaccine, get it out in November only to find out that it didn't work. The negative effect on the psyche of our communities will be hard to overcome. The skepticism will skyrocket and people will say, see I told you so it didn't work. That is what I fear the most, that we will accelerate this for the wrong reasons. Once we know it works, then I will be advocating for people to get it as soon as possible. But at the same time, I'm very wary of telling people to get something until we know it works. So I'm really hopeful that we listen to the scientists and we only approve this thing when we know it works."
In-state, Wednesday was the first two-day stretch with fewer than 300 in ICU or hospitalized since mid-August, and while Minnesota has been trending down in some coronavirus statistics there are still plenty of cases in Minnesota to conduct this study according to Hilden.
"We have enough cases of coronavirus in Minnesota to make that possible. They only doing the trials in states and places where the virus is relatively common. They're not going to give it to people in the rural West, because there aren't enough cases and they need to know that there's enough prevalence of the disease. And so I think because the people are fairly aware of it in Minnesota, there's a population that's big enough, we have a fairly aged population, I think people will sign up. My guess is that they will get to their 1500 volunteers relatively easy."
You can find more on the study and sign up for the trial here.