Jocelyn KaiserScience's COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Heising-Simons Foundation.As large trials get underway to test the vaccines needed to stop the global coronavirus pandemic, one group has realized they are being left out and is not happy: People living with HIV.Several companies pursuing a COVID-19 vaccine, including Moderna, which began giving its candidate to volunteers in a planned 30,000-person efficacy trial on Monday, plan to exclude HIV-positive people because of fears that their infection would impair an immunization response.
But AIDS activists and researchers argue that most HIV-infected people on antiviral treatment don’t have suppressed immune systems and that leaving them out of tests of the.