First Coronavirus Vaccine to be Tested on Humans Today

It was initially thought that the first human trials of a coronavirus vaccine wouldn't occur until sometime in April. That, however, is no longer the case.

So far, about 35 different companies have been scrambling to create COVID-19 vaccines since the outbreak began. Out of those 35, at least 4 companies have already began testing their vaccine on animals.

According to Fox News, a biotech company in Massachusetts called 'Moderna' has just shipped its human-test ready vaccine to the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

The human trials are going to be starting today at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. The testing will begin on 45 healthy and young volunteers as they attempt to learn more about Moderna's mRNA-1273 vaccine.

The idea with preliminary human testing is to rule out any major side-effects before the testing goes to larger groups of test subjects. The participants cannot be infected by COVID-19 from the vaccine.

However, even with the rapid development and testing of this vaccine, at best, experts say we are at least a year, maybe more, away from distribution of the vaccine to the general population. If the vaccine were available in a year, it would be a record-setting pace never seen before in vaccine development.