By Reuters team
(Reuters) – College students in the United States, vaccinated with Moderna Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, will be part of a new study to test its effectiveness in reducing the spread of the virus, the COVID-19 Prevention Network said on Friday. .
The trial, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is designed to determine whether the vaccine, mRNA-1273, can prevent coronavirus infection, limit the virus in the nose and reduce the transmission of vaccinated individuals to their close contacts.
The Prevent COVID U study, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), will monitor about 12,000 young adults at 20 universities over a five-month period.
Half of the students will be vaccinated at the time of enrollment, while the other half will receive the vaccine four months late, according to the network, formed by NIAID, to conduct studies of vaccines and antibodies to the new coronavirus.
Students, as well as 25,000 individuals named by them as ‘close contacts’, will complete questionnaires, take samples of nasal swabs and provide blood samples for a specified period, allowing study researchers to measure the spread of the virus.
“Our hope is to demonstrate that the COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from becoming infected with the coronavirus in the first place and that it stops transmitting to others,” said Dr. Larry Corey, principal investigator for the network’s operations program.