Nurses withdraw doses of the vaccine from a vial while Maryland residents receive their second dose of the Modern coronavirus vaccine at the Cameron Grove Community Center on March 25, 2021 in Bowie, Maryland.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
A new study supported by the National Institutes of Health aims to help doctors and public officials discover what people can and cannot do after being vaccinated against the coronavirus, including whether they will still need to wear masks and practice social detachment.
The study, funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will test the ability of the Modern Covid-19 vaccine to prevent coronavirus infection, limit the amount of virus in the nose and reduce the transmission of inoculated people to close contacts.
“We hope that in the next five or more months we will be able to answer the very important question of whether vaccinated people are infected asymptomatically and, if that happens, they pass the infection on to others,” White House chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci said at a news conference on Friday.
The randomized, controlled study will follow 12,000 university students aged 18 to 26 at more than 20 American universities for five months. The preliminary study sites opened Thursday.
Study participants will be randomly divided into two groups. Six thousand students will be vaccinated immediately with Moderna’s double vaccine, spread 28 days apart. Six thousand will be vaccinated four months later as an initial control group.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their first guidance to people who were fully inoculated against Covid-19 on March 8. According to the CDC, fully vaccinated people can safely visit other fully vaccinated people and some unvaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or social distance.