CINCINNATI, Oh - About 50 volunteers had their first dose of the Coronavirus vaccine this month.


What You Need To Know


  • 50 Volunteers got the trial Coronavirus vaccine this month

  • Researchers say they've had mild to no side effects

  • Researchers still looking for more minorities to test vaccine to complete study

Next, researchers will be looking for 150, then thousands to test it, but first, they have to make sure it works for everyone.

Fifty healthy adults answered the call to try out a new vaccine against COVID-19.

“I just wanna see a vaccine developed to this virus,” said Study Participant Jeroi Glueck.

“I feel like I’m doing part of my job for humanity, and you know for society,” said Study Participant Emily Chestnut.

It’s a vaccine that researchers say has had little to no side effects.

“It doesn’t hurt, it’s a prick to give blood, it’s a prick to get a shot,” said Study Participant Tracy Shirley.

But researchers say there aren’t enough volunteers like Tracy Shirley.

“It’s worth it for our community, and community meaning mine, African-American,” said Shirley.

Researchers say out of the 50 volunteers testing the vaccine, four were minorities, and they need more.

“You really need to target the group that’s at higher risk because if they do get sick, they’re gonna have a higher risk of having a very bad illness, so I wanna protect everyone, but I particularly wanna protect people at high risk,” said Vaccine Research Center Director Dr. Robert Frenck.

Dr. Robert Frenck is the director at the Vaccine Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

He says they’re trying to get at least 150 more diverse participants as they move into the next phase of the vaccine trials.

“We’re gonna be looking at not only safety but now the immune response to see how strong our body’s immune response is to the vaccine,” said Dr. Frenck.

The vaccine is coming from this pharmaceutical company; if it works, he says your body will create antibodies to fight off the main protein in the coronavirus.

“The vaccine that we’re using cannot give you COVID, it’s impossible, what we’re doing is taking a piece of the genetic material of the virus, and that’s what we’re using as the vaccine, but it’s not the whole virus, it’s not a live virus,” said Dr. Frenck.

And so far he says, the vaccine they’ve started using on people this month, has been relatively mild.

“The things we’ve noticed is some, mild headache, mild body ache, a couple of people have had a mild fever, all of these things have resolved in a day,” said Dr. Frenck.

But they still don’t know just yet whether the vaccine actually works against COVID-19.

Researchers say they’ll start testing how effective the vaccine is by the end of the summer and should have the results to the FDA by the fall.