“Preliminary analysis suggests a broadly consistent safety and efficacy profile across all evaluated subgroups.”
Several Blacks who participated in Moderna’s trial had cases of the disease before taking the vaccine. Many reports have found that Blacks were more likely to be victims of preexisting conditions that predispose them to the Coronavirus disease and were less likely to have access to health insurance and remote work that would limit exposure.
In addition, Blacks are three times more likely than whites to be infected by coronavirus, and Blacks are twice as likely to die from the virus according to various reports.
“The coronavirus disease epidemic that upended every aspect of American life has exposed the naked face of institutional and interpersonal racism,” says Marc H. Morial, President & CEO of the National Urban League.
There has been a long-standing mistrust of the healthcare system among blacks ever since the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment began in 1932.
Black men, many who were sharecroppers who had never visited a doctor, enrolled in the Tuskegee project in exchange for free medical care. Unfortunately, hundreds of black men died from the disease because adequate treatment was withheld from them, causing unnecessary pain and suffering.
Moderna’s trial, known as the COVE study, involved 15,000 participants who were given a placebo, a shot of saline that has no effect. The other half of study participants were given the COVID-19 vaccine.
When the results were delivered for the participants who were given a placebo, reports showed that 90 of them developed COVID-19. The impacted participants included 12 Hispanics, four Blacks, and three Asians.
Eleven of the participants were severe cases of COVID-19, but the racial identity was not revealed. However, those 15,000 volunteers who were given the COVID-19 vaccine did not become severely ill and only five contracted the virus.
Moderna’s clinical trials may potentially move everyone a step closer to