Hundreds of local people have participated in Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax vaccination trials, and the Jacksonville Center for Clinical Research has said they are being well-tolerated in the area.
Regardless of variants or brands of vaccine, the center said everyone should get vaccinated.
Everywhere ,scientists are working to crank out doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
Thursday, Novavax announced their protein-based vaccine has an 89.3% efficacy in UK clinical trials.
This data is good news for Jacksonville research Encore, who’s been testing this vaccine for the last month.
“Novavax, which we now put in 325 people in here in Northeast Florida, is a synthetically made spike protein, there’s something called an adjuvant that presents the spike protein to the immune system,” said Michael Koren, CEO of the Jacksonville Center for Clinical Research.
In recent weeks, variants of the virus have been confirmed across the country.
In Florida, there are more than 50 cases of the UK strain.
Novavax is reporting 86% efficacy for the UK variant, and 60% for the South African variant.
“So still effective, but not as effective,” Koren said.
Koren also warned against people who want to wait and see what happens with the variants before getting vaccinated.
“I would say that’s not a good idea,” he said. “Because we know that the vaccines have effectiveness against the new variants. So whether or not there is another version of vaccine that’s made that’s even better against the new variants is something that will we can talk about in the future.”
The Florida Department of Health says 314,528 people in Florida have completed their series of vaccinations and over 1,900,000 vaccines have been administered.
Meanwhile, hospitalizations have taken a decline in the US, with less than 100,000 Americans hospitalized in the last two months.
In Duval County, the department of health reported 403 hospitalizations Sunday, the lowest it’s been since there were 566 hospitalizations on Jan. 12th.
Koren says even if a person were to be infected by the new variants, being vaccinated would give you a less severe infection.