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Second person to receive Moderna's trial Covid-19 vaccine describes how he was checked for 'weird side effects' after jab

November 18, 2020

Neal Browning said he would be lying if he wasn’t nervous when he received the injection in March.

An American man who was the second person in the world to be given Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine during trials has recalled his nerves when receiving the jab in March, but says his only side effect was a slight sore arm.

Yesterday US biotechnology company Moderna announced its vaccine appears to be 94.5 per cent effective, according to preliminary trial data. 

Neal Browning volunteered for the first phase of the trial of the vaccine, which "had never been given to animals, let alone humans before” in March in the early days of the pandemic.

“This is phase one in making sure it’s safe in the human body,” he said.

“They made sure I hung around for about an hour in case there were any weird side effects.”

Browning and others in the first phase of the trial were given 25 micrograms of the vaccine, with the current dose 100 micrograms.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t [nervous], knowing that I was the second person in the world to get this, the first person had been 15 minutes before me."

He said there were "definitely some tight nerves" going into it.

“They wanted to start small with the first people to make sure it was safe.”

Four weeks later Browning was given a second injection, with the only side effect a slight pain in the upper arm similar to when you get a flu shot.

Browning explained how the science of the vaccine had been described to him and the others in the trial.

“It’s a very new technology, it moves one of the more difficult parts of creating the virus inside the human body and lets the human body do it for them,” he said.

“It’s a messenger RNA which is basically a set of instructions that tells your DNA what to do, this hijacks a handful of cells in your body, tells it to reprogramme and produce the spike proteins that have been seen now by the representations on digital media across the globe.”

“Those spiked proteins produced in your blood by your body are then recognised by your immune system, and your immune system learns how properly to attack them with antibodies and t-cells to eliminate them.”

“The idea is that memory stays around for six months to a year to protect you so that when the real Covid vaccine when these same spikes appears it’s instantly recognised and attacked.”

With Moderna announcing yesterday that the vaccine is 95 per cent effective, Browning felt as though he had done the right thing even if the trial had been unsuccessful.

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