Volunteers roll up their sleeves in the fight against coronavirus

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    ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — Across the nation, volunteers are rolling up their sleeves in the fight against coronavirus. They’re volunteering their bodies in the race for a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 spread. It will take tens or hundreds of thousands as several vaccines enter Phase Three Efficacy Trials. Efficacy trials determine whether an intervention produces the expected result under ideal circumstances, according to the National Institutes of Health.

News 13 looks at why mountain residents are stepping forward and how this region may get involved in the fight to find a vaccine for COVID-19.

“I’ve never faced a situation quite as scary as this,” Travis Wheeler said.

At 35, COVID-19 put Wheeler on the front lines as an essential worker.

“I’ve been helping my parents by bringing them groceries and stuff so they don’t have to go out,” Wheeler said.

Across the city, Ella Smith’s customer service agent job kept her less exposed.

“We’re lucky to all work from home,” Smith said. “We have what we kind of call a pod, with my household, my roommates and I and a few select friends, we share airspace, but otherwise, maintaining strict social distancing outside of our household.”

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At home, Wheeler has been isolating, choosing the company of pets over social situations.

“This is Jade,” Wheeler said, holding out his ball python. “I’m trying my best to stay as far away from other people as I can.”

Despite managing their risks, Wheeler and Smith are ready to see COVID-19 slither into a distant memory.

“I think our best chance right now is to get to that vaccine. I don’t really see much improvement happening before then,” Wheeler said.

“I would like for this whole pandemic to be over, so, as soon as I started seeing stories on the news, I got interested,” Smith said.

Ready to roll up their sleeves, both recently went to the COVID-19 Prevention Network website, volunteering for the phase three trials.

“I did my research to make sure I knew the risks first,” Wheeler said.

Those risks are minimal, with side effects, including minor arm soreness or slight fever, according to the FDA.

“It was easy. They asked me a series of questions, like lifestyle exposure risk, do you work outside of the home, occupation?” Smith explained.

The process
“We’ve never been more pressed to speed up what is typically a normally very long and drawn out process,” said Dr. William Hathaway, Chief Medical Officer of Mission Hospital.

Hathaway explained “Operation Warp Speed” pulled together government agencies and 18 bio-pharmaceuticals to speed up development and manufacturing of a COVID-19 vaccine.

“We’ve compressed what’s normally multiple years in development into just a few months,” Hathaway said.

Phases one and two tested the concept and dosing. Phase three will see if the vaccine produces results when given to 30,000 volunteers and identify potential side effects.

“It takes tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people to find the five or six who have these adverse events,” Hathaway said.

Moderna had signed up more than 21,000 volunteers as of Sept. 4.

“These trials are what they call double blind, randomized, clinical control trials. That means double blind, meaning investigators and the people don’t know whether they got a placebo or the real drug,” Hathaway said.

Two of the three leading vaccine manufacturers are actively recruiting, with AstraZeneca paused, after someone participating in the trial had an unexplained illness in the UK. That program is now under review.

“You want to make sure that the volunteers aren’t just 18 to 24 year old boys in college. It must be generalizable across the entire population,” Hathaway said.

Research sites
Ninety-nine research sites nationwide are participating. In North Carolina, five of six sites are taking volunteers, plus three in upstate South Carolina and four in Tennessee. Mission Health has applied to join.

“We’re hopeful through our affiliation with the HCA Research Institute in Nashville that we’ll become a site for these trials,” Hathaway said.

The FDA promised safety protocol won’t be sidestepped despite the effort to fast-track a vaccine. Even so, why volunteer?

“I understand the risk and I do have a certain amount of fear about it. But to me, the fear of getting the virus is greater,” Wheeler said.

“A lot of people are scared of things they don’t understand of science, and that’s OK. You don’t have to understand everything about it in order to know that it works,” Smith said.

A low-risk procedure with a worldwide impact.

“This is necessary. We need this. There’s not another way out of this without a whole lot of people dying,” Smith said.

So far, neither Wheeler nor Smith has gotten a call to participate. If chosen to participate, volunteers are looking at a two-year commitment of six appointments, with two injections given 28 days apart.

News 13 has mapped the location of COVID-19 vaccine trials happening around our tri-state region. You can use the map below to find more information about signing up by clicking the vaccine and then clicking on the link to more information.

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