Officials are looking for 500 participants to take place in a clinical research trial at Hattiesburg Clinic that will investigate a potential vaccine for COVID-19 through its clinical research program.
On a recent Facebook Live post, Mayor Toby Barker said during the study – which is sponsored by biotechnology company Moderna and is designed to test how safe and effective the study is at preventing illness after someone is exposed to the SARS-Co-V-2 virus – will be a randomized control trial.
“Half will receive the vaccine; half will receive a placebo,” he said. “They will not tell you ahead of time which one you receive – they will not even tell the physician who referred you which one you received.”
During the trial, participants will continue their daily habits and COVID precautions, and participants will monitor and identify any possible symptoms of the virus.
Staff will keep in touch with patients for evaluation.
“There is no cost in receiving the vaccine – it comes with pay if you’re participating,” Barker said.
Those wishing to participate can visit https://bit.ly/2YIO4ba or call (601) 544-1866 to sign up.
Participants must fill out a short information form and those who qualify will be contacted by Hattiesburg Clinic representatives.
The clinic was recently chosen as one of only 89 sites chosen to participate in the trial, which is the clinic’s attempt at the prevention side of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re very pleased to be involved in the latest Phase III trial, which means our community will have access to this as early as any other community in the world,” said Dr. Rambod Rouhbakhsh, who serves as faculty physician and program director at the Forrest General Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. “This is the Moderna vaccine that you have heard so much about in the news.
“It’s a novel RNA messenger vaccine that’s designed to not only be efficacious with lower side effects, but to be able to be ramped up very, very quickly so that we can get many billions of those out around the world if this winds up being a efficacious treatment. This represents just a piece of what the clinic has done since the pandemic began.”
The study is focused on critically needed vaccine recipients, such as high-risk patients including the elderly and those with underlying illnesses.
Rouhbakhsh said the trial probably won’t end until the early part of 2021 at best.
“You have to bear in mind that if we give the vaccine to one group and the placebo to the other, we then send both groups out into the world and see what becomes of them,” he said. “The placebo group will have to get the illness for us to know that there’s a difference between that and the investigational arm, and that takes time.
“Unfortunately, in America, we have a lot of cases, and so the likelihood of getting this illness is quite high if you don’t have the vaccine. So we may get that data sooner rather than later, but it will take some time.”
