BALTIMORE – A graduate student in Maryland believes that he may be the first person to be successfully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
David Rach became the first person to be injected with a trial COVID-19 vaccine, made by Pfizer, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
According to researchers, early indications show the vaccine is working by stimulating the growth of antibodies at rates equal or higher to those who have the illness.
“There is also a component of relief seeing that it’s actually producing results that the vaccine is producing antibodies,” Rach said.
Rach isn’t sure if he received the actual vaccine or a saline solution, but after a slight reaction from receiving a second dose, he believes he is one of the very few people in the world vaccinated against COVID-19.
“It’s exciting. It’s exciting from the side of a participant, it’s exciting from the side of a graduate student studying immunology and it is also exciting in hopefully the promise of a vaccine by next year and life returning to a semblance of normal,” Rach said.
Rach is expected to be checked again in the following months to see if he truly does have immunity against the coronavirus.
Pfizer says that if all goes according to plan, they hope to have 100 million doses of the vaccine before the end of the year.