Dr. Oz: 'Big news' in race for COVID-19 vaccine
Dr. Mehmet Oz breaks down a new Moderna vaccine trial showing 'promising' results
After a human trial for a coronavirus vaccine showed promising results, Dr. Mehmet Oz said on Wednesday that it does not mean that an effective vaccine will be ready by November.
“This is a vaccine that has never been made before. It is an mRNA vaccine,” the host of “The Dr. Oz Show” said on “Fox & Friends," responding to a question on whether a vaccine breakthrough could impact how voters see the situation before Election Day.
The first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in the U.S. boosted the immune systems of the study's participants and is being hailed a major step in the right direction towards eradicating COVID-19.
“No matter how you slice this, this is good news,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told The Associated Press.
The vaccine, which was developed by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will be tested in a 30,000-person study that begins on July 27 to prove if it's strong enough to be effective against the virus, Fox 5 reported.
This is the biggest COVID-19 study of its kind so far. Researchers reported the good news from their original data, which was taken from 45 volunteers who rolled up their sleeves in March to serve as the initial test subjects.
Oz said that the 45 trial volunteers each got “two doses” of the vaccine and then had “trivial side effects.” Oz said that the trial volunteers would “theoretically” be prepared to battle COVID-19 if they are exposed to it.
“Fatigue, some headaches at times, and a little injection of site pain, they made, in all cases, antibodies against COVID-19 and they made those antibodies often times at four times the amount you would make if you had naturally gotten the virus,” Oz said.
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Those participants developed neutralizing antibodies -- which help block infection -- in their bloodstream at levels similar to those found in people who survived COVID-19, according to the research team's report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Oz said that the process is headed in the “right direction,” but said that vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez told him widespread vaccination for Americans could take up to a year to develop and implement.
He added: “Remember, in order to vaccinate people they would have to get infected. So they got to get exposed to the virus naturally and then figure out if they actually were able to withstand the virus more often than not. You can’t do that in three months, you probably can’t do that in six months.
“By the beginning of 2021, we will have a pretty good idea which vaccines would be the ones to bet on. There are 17 being used in human trials and there are 150 total possible vaccines out there. But none would be ready by November.”
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