The Vaccine News That Really Matters

The Vaccine News That Really Matters

Before COVID-19 upended our lives, clinical vaccine trials typically made news only when they were done—when scientists could definitively say, Yes, this one works or No, it doesn’t. These days, every step of the COVID-19 vaccine-development process comes under intense public scrutiny: This vaccine works in monkeysIt’s safe in the 45 people who have gotten itThe entire trial is on pause because one participant got sick, but we don’t know yet whether the person got a vaccine or a placebo!


“Never before have there been vaccine trials that have been followed so closely from inception to onset to conduct,” Dan Barouch, a vaccine researcher at Harvard and collaborator on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, says. Over the next few months, the companies behind the leading vaccine candidates will start releasing the first data from large clinical trials. Most likely, they will not be unalloyed good news or bad news. Keeping expectations measured will require understanding when a vaccine clears just one of many hurdles—it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it must be good enough.


Clinical trials usually follow three phases, with the first two focused on questions of safety and dosing. By Phase 3, a vaccine should already be proven safe for most people, which leads to the key question: How well does it actually work? Five vaccines—from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax—have already begun or are beginning Phase 3 trials that seek to recruit tens of thousands of volunteer ..

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