Noah Aniser
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html
The drugmaker Moderna spells out how it is conducting the late-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine.
The article is about the biotech company Moderna and how they released a 135-page document about the late-stage trial of their vaccine. Moderna’s documents suggest that the first trial data will probably not be conducted until late December and might not even include enough information to determine whether the vaccine works or not. It’s more likely that the complete analysis will be conducted in March and May.
Even though May sounds really late, Moderna is one the front runners in the race for a vaccine against Covid-19. Moderna’s vaccine uses genetic material from the virus itself to prompt cells in the body to make a fragment of the virus that will train the immune system to fight off an infection.
They already enrolled more than 25,000 people with about 28 percent of the participants being Black, Latino or from other minority groups that have been heavily affected. The diversity is essential and necessary because everybody is affected, no matter what your ethnicity or age is.
After giving some main information, the author continues with an explanation of how they will test the vaccine. So, half of the participants will receive the vaccine and the other half gets a placebo shot. After receiving two shots, four weeks apart, the participants will get monitored to see if they develop symptoms.
In order to prevent possible side effects, the participants track their temperatures and have clinic visits on a regular basis.
So, far the vaccine has a 60 percent success rate which is 10 percent higher than the Food and Drug Administration has set the bar.
The article is well written because it’s quite short but still includes all the necessary information. Even though I have no idea about drugs and vaccines, the author gave me a pretty good understanding of how it works.
The headline is well chosen and attracts the reader because it gives a promising outlook for the fight against Covid-19.
I think the article is newsworthy because we are all affected by the pandemic and news about a possible vaccine are interesting to all of us.