This is how the new corona vaccine is tested

"It took us 42 days from the time Chinese scientists delivered the analysis of the virus's DNA until we had a test vaccine ready," says Stéphane Bancel, CEO of pharmaceutical company Moderna to SVT.

In the United States, the first people have now received the new vaccine against the coronavirus. In a few weeks the virus should be tested on their blood.

"I'm the first to get the vaccine, I can hardly believe it's true," said Jennifer Haller, the 43-year-old woman who was the first to receive a syringe with the new vaccine in the city of Seattle on the west coast of the United States.

In this first round of patients, the purpose is to ensure that side effects do not occur. 45 healthy adult individuals will receive the vaccine starting this week. A refill dose with additional vaccine is then given in one month. Because this is a so-called RNA vaccine, the researchers believe that the risk of side effects is very small.

- The substance disappears in 48 hours, says Moderna's CEO Stéphane Bancel to SVT.

The researchers will now also take blood tests on patients to study antibodies and then expose the blood to coronavirus, to hopefully see in the laboratory how the patient blood antibodies attack and knock out the virus.

The hope is to have a vaccine ready for delivery in early 2021. The pharmaceutical company Moderna is located in Boston / Cambridge on the US east coast and has its own vaccine factory just outside the city. To SVT, Stéphane Bancel says that they already have great capacity for vaccine production but that an expansion of the factory has already begun.

- If this succeeds, it is a world record in vaccine production, says Stéphane Bancel.

He also says that the vaccine doses for the next step in research are already being produced in their factories. In the summer, it is hoped that hundreds of people will be able to give the vaccine, to see that it works properly, in a so-called phase 2 study.

- It looks very promising. It should be borne in mind that Moderna who runs this both has fantastic resources, the company has a value of 100 billion, but they are also good, and they have invested everything on a card here. Immediately when they got the DNA sequence, they started developing their drug and it looks really promising, says Matti Sällberg, professor and vaccine developer at the Karolinska Institute.

In the United States, the process of the new corona vaccine has been given top priority by the country's drug authority FDA.

"I really hope that this can save lives," says test-vaccinated patient Jennifer Haller in Seattle.