A new website that allows people to volunteer to take part in Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials in the US is now live.
The website – coronaviruspreventionnetwork.org – will handle registration for the four large vaccine studies expected to start this summer and fall, and any others that follow.
The US Department of Health and Human Services announced the website Wednesday, along with the appointment of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle as the coordinating center for vaccine clinical trials run by the Covid-19 Prevention Network, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
On the new website, anyone interested in joining a vaccine study can fill out a quick questionnaire. After registering, your information will be sent to the study site closest to you.
Several of the questions are designed to assess how likely you are to become infected and sick with Covid-19, including your race, what kind of work you do, and how many people you come into contact with on a daily basis. Based on those answers, you might be rejected.
People who don’t get out much, and who wear a mask when they do leave home would not make the best study subjects. That’s because the point of the study is to see if the vaccine protects people from getting sick with Covid-19. If people who mostly stay home get vaccinated, and they don’t get sick with Covid-19, it’s hard to know if the vaccine protected them or if their lifestyle kept them away from the virus in the first place.
Some context: It’s unclear exactly how many volunteers will be needed for all the vaccine trials.
In a June interview, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins told CNN each trial would have around 30,000 volunteers, but a statement Wednesday from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center said there will be 10,000 to 30,000 volunteers per trial.