The First Person To Receive Coronavirus Trial Vaccine Has Finally Spoken

The First Person to Receive Coronavirus Trial Vaccine has finally Spoken

The injection, applied to the left shoulder, lasted only a few seconds. But with it came the hopes of a world locked in a battle with coronavirus and no small amount of personal risk.

Jennifer Haller, a 44-year-old mother of two, did not flinch in the corner of the Seattle laboratory as the man in a face mask and blue gloves made the injection.
She had made up her mind long before the morning in March on which she became the first person in any country to receive a possible vaccine for Covid-19, according to US researchers.

Weeks earlier Ms Haller, an operations manager at a tech start-up, had spotted a call-out for participants in the historic trial on Facebook. She decided to opt-in.

The final yes was not instantaneous, however. As she went through the medical checks needed to get approved for the trial, concerns were raised by her friends and family. Her husband wondered whether it really was safe. The couple had allowed their son to take part in a few medical studies while an infant, but this was different.

The trial, run by Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, would involve two doses of an experimental vaccine being given 28 days apart, then a year of monitoring.

The vaccine, named mRNA-1273, had been tested on animals and showed promise. This was the first time it would be used on a human