Prism Health North Texas is looking for people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area who are interested in taking part in Phase III of COVID-19 vaccine trials for AstraZeneca. While AstraZeneca is searching for 30,000 people required across the study; 250 are sought from North Texas.
A Prism Health North Texas (PHNTX) release explained:
“For the AZD1222 vaccine study, PHNTX is seeking participants 18 years and older especially in groups that are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 including people with underlying medical conditions, with greater risk of exposure at their jobs, who live or work in elder-care facilities, jails, or prisons, who are over the age of 65, or are in racial and ethnic groups that have been impacted in greater numbers by the epidemic such as African Americans, Latinx, American Indians, and Alaskan Natives.”
NBC 5 spoke with David Keller, a freelance videographer from Charleston, S.C., who is already taking part in an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial through the Medical University of South Carolina.
“I decided to be a part of the trial because I am ready for this pandemic to be over,” Keller said. “I just want it to end as soon as it can and I want to do my part to make that happen and I think this is probably the only way that we are going to get out of it.”
Keller explained after he received his first of two shots on his first visit; after filling out paperwork and doing blood work.
“I didn’t feel really hardly anything on the day of the shot. After a few hours, I was starting to think that I got the placebo,” Keller said. “But, then by that night, I started to feel it. The next day I ran a 102 fever, had body aches, chills. It wasn’t as bad as the flu, but was like a moderate head cold.”
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“The side effects lasted for a full day and the fever broke that night and I was fine after that,” Keller said. “The side effects to this really I view as a small price to pay for the payout which is possibly being immune from this virus.”
Keller said he did not feel any major side effects after the second injection approximately 30 days later.
“My only advice is to plan for the day after your [first] shot to be off of work if that is at all possible. Just plan on one sick day the day after your shot,” Keller said. “I have not been told if I officially received the vaccine, but based on the severity of my reaction to the first dose, I’m 99.9% sure that I did get the actual vaccine and not the placebo.”
Keller explained he signed up for a two-year AstraZeneca study.
“They can test my blood and see how long this immunity lasts because that’s another thing that we don’t know yet.”
