Western Pa. resident shares experience with Moderna vaccine trial

As vaccine rollout gets underway in hospitals and long-term care facilities, participants in the trials that made it possible are coming forward to share their experiences – and to assure members of the public there is nothing to fear.

“I just thought, maybe people might have a better understanding,” said Dennis Mader, 72, a resident of Burgettstown in Washington County who participated in the Moderna vaccine trial via UPMC. “A lot of people I talk to, they just hear things. And they hear the bad things. And I thought, maybe to throw some positive thoughts in this process might not be a bad thing.”

Moderna is one of two pharmaceutical companies that have created a covid-19 vaccine that’s been approved for Emergency Use Authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Following a three-month trial that included more than 30,000 participants nationwide, Moderna’s vaccine was found to be 94.5% effective in preventing covid-19. Trial leaders recently decided to “unblind” participants – meaning participants who had received the placebo were told they hadn’t received the real vaccine and given the option to receive the real drug.

Mader said he volunteered for the trial after seeing an advertisement on TV in September. He normally isn’t one to reply to such calls, but he was moved to participate because of the rising covid levels throughout the Western Pennsylvania region.

The process, he said, was thorough and organized. He called the number from TV and received a call back a few days later. From there, he had to complete an hour-long phone interview before being accepted and scheduled an appointment for his first dose. His second dose came a month later.

Once he had received his doses, he was instructed not to isolate himself – he was encouraged to go about his daily life while following public health guidelines and precautions. He kept a daily journal to keep track of how he was feeling, and he received weekly phone calls from trial administrators at UPMC to check in on his health.

Mader was unblinded on Thursday and learned he had been in the placebo group.

“I got the vaccine immediately,” Mader said. “They offered it and I said yes, and I have my booster scheduled in a month.”

At no point, Mader said, did he feel hesitation about the speed at which the vaccine was developed – and he doesn’t think people should fear getting the vaccine.

“Today’s technology permitted (Moderna) not to circumvent any process, not cut corners of any of the processes,” he said. “It just happened quicker because it was a pandemic, but they still had to meet all the guidelines of the FDA and the CDC.”

Overall, Mader said he was comfortable with the entire vaccine trial process. He’d never participated in any kind of drug trial before, he said, but he was impressed by the thoroughness of the research and the constant communication with physicians. He said there was a physician that he could reach out to at any point in case he felt something was wrong.

“Moderna and UPMC were just 100% positive with this response,” he said.