Martin EnserinkScience’s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.I’ve been wrestling with a dilemma the past few weeks: Do I stay in the COVID-19 vaccine trial I’ve been enrolled in for 4 months—and which I very much hope will be successful—or do I drop out, take an already proven vaccine, and protect myself sooner?
It’s a question thousands of trial participants have faced over the past 6 months but that you don’t hear much about.I knew I might face this dilemma since 21 January, the day I drove to a behemoth academic center in the southeastern part of Amsterdam, my hometown, to enroll in the HERALD study, a large efficacy trial of a candidate COVID-19 vaccine produced by the company CureVac.