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ALBANY – Liberal Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman is one of thousands of Americans who have enlisted in moonshot trials to develop a safe vaccine against the coronavirus, leading to the announcement of the COVID-shot. 19 of the Pfizer bomb this week.
“I’ve always been a pro-vaccine policy maker, so I thought it was time to ‘put your money where your mouth is,'” the 55-year-old Democrat told The Post.
Hoylman signed up for the study in August – the pharmaceutical giant is leading it with the NYU Langone Hospital System – and received two injections after blood tests showed he was negative for antibodies to the coronavirus.
The legislator has no idea whether he received the vaccine or the placebo, which is common practice in experiments designed to study the effectiveness of vaccines and drugs.
Regardless, he is required to complete an online journal every week, reporting any symptoms or irregularities to clinicians.
The study will last two years and Hoylman will return to the lab in February for another blood test and analysis.
However, the first results released by the company have been so promising that health officials are hoping they can gain approval to begin distributing the vaccine to essential workers – like doctors and nurses – by the end of the year. .
Pfizer shocked the world by announcing early Monday morning that the vaccine it has been developing for months with BioNTech is over 90% effective.
The news has brought much-needed hope to the battle against COVID-19, which infects more than 100,000 Americans a day and has already killed nearly 240,000 Americans since the pandemic hit the country in March.
Placebo or vaccine – Hoylman told The Post he experienced side effects in the first few days after receiving the first vaccine, including headaches, although he admitted he was prone to migraines.
Symptoms worsened with the second injection and included fever, body aches and a week of fatigue.
“It’s nothing serious, but you feel like you’ve had the flu,” he said.
The lawmaker said he joined the study after hearing the state and country ‘rejection’ in news reports and on television related to vaccine development – arguing as he trusted the process. test, scientists are still waiting for a final, foolproof product.
“It is important to understand [the drug’s] safety and effectiveness and that is why I am in this essay. I trust health professionals, ”he said.
Pfizer’s local trial currently has about 150 people enrolled according to Mark Mulligan, MD, director of the NYU Langone Vaccine Center.
The center first obtained federal and state approvals last spring, which gave them the green light to start again on May 4.
“It’s pretty amazing to see just six months later that we’re getting such positive results,” Mulligan told The Post in a telephone interview.
“We’re in this medical emergency – a global pandemic – so we’ve been working really hard because we feel people are dying and we need to act very quickly. Normally we don’t go at such a speed, because most vaccines take five, 10 years or sometimes more. But in just six months, to have efficacy data is truly amazing, ”he said, adding that he had been conducting vaccine studies for 26 years now.
“As a doctor and a scientist, I’m interested in what the data says. We are very careful – although we are moving very fast due to the urgency, we are not taking any shortcuts.
“Almost 44,000 people have received the Pfizer vaccine to date, and the safety has been exceptional. I think people should be convinced that this is a safe vaccine. I think the safety will probably hold up and it will be a safe vaccine. It’s all about clinical research. “
NYU Langone is currently working on recruiting a COVID-19 vaccine trial developed by Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, and hopes to attract at least 1,000 participants.
Additional reporting by Nolan Hicks
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