New Jobs
L2 Support Engineer (m/f/x) - Solventum - Built In Walgreens must pay $987 million arbitration award to virtual care company, judge rules Doximity, Inc. (DOCS): Among the Health Information Services Stocks Outpacing the Market in 2... Nurse Innovators Take the Spotlight at ViVE 2025 Holland startup raises $27M to expand gig-based medical coding platform Omnicare Pharmacy to Pay $124M Settlement for Illegal Kickbacks to Nursing Homes State scholarship aims to address behavioral health worker shortage - YouTube Omnicare Pharmacy to Pay $124M Settlement for Illegal Kickbacks to Nursing Homes Night Nurse Arrested For Not Feeding Child, Faces Felony Neglect Charges - Nurse.org Wallace-Dothan hosts simulation for area nursing and medical students - MSN Baystate Health eliminates nearly 100 corporate positions | HealthLeaders Media This Week's Health IT Jobs – February 5, 2025 | Healthcare IT Today Fake Nurse Sentenced for Medicaid Fraud, Gets 5 Years Probation - Nurse.org (Dual post linked with Job ID 54730 Medical Coding Specialist) - HigherEdJobs The new-collar revolution - The New Indian Express PMBAUSA LLC Grants $2M Worth of Medical Coding Credentials as Part of Certification ... JCC partners with CareerStep for online healthcare job training | News | bradfordera.com ScribeEMR to Highlight AI Scribing and Virtual Coding Advances at the National Association ..... CAPS launches new program for lab techs - The Source - WashU American Nurses Association Announces Code of Ethics for Nurses Revision 2025 Intermediate Full Stack C# Developer - South Africa - Centurion - Bizcommunity This Week's Health IT Jobs – January 29, 2025 | Healthcare IT Today Peirce College to Work with Chester County Economic Development Council on Good Jobs ... - MS... Opening Up About My Mental Health, How a Wellness Retreat Helped Me Overcome Past Trauma Per Diem Nurse Staffing Market to Skyrocket—$16.4 Billion by 2033 - Nurse.org Medical Coding Market Size to Surpass USD 89.49 Billion by 2033 | Straits Research Peirce College to Work with Chester County Economic Development Council on Good Jobs ... AI job market booms with 42% growth over two years; overall hiring up by 31% (YoY) in Decembe... Nurse Practitioner Billed Insurance $62M In Fake B-12 Shots Scheme, Gets 5 Years Prison High-Paying Jobs That Don't Require College Salary Story: I Never Thought I Would Make Six Figures — Here's How I Got There - MSN Unifying Innovation and Patient-Centricity: Clinion Leads the AI Revolution at ISCR 2025 Offered $45 and Hour With a Master's Degree - Nurse Educator Pay Is a Healthcare Crisis VA Hospital Overhauls Security After Nurse Attack U.S. News and World Report Best Jobs - MedCentral Top 10 Highest-Paying Remote Jobs in 2025 - Education Times Zuckerberg Announces Plans to Automate Facebook Coding Jobs With AI - MSN Incentives aim to lure RNs to nursing home jobs | HealthLeaders Media Top Master's in Health Informatics Programs | 2025 - Nurse.org Get paid +$150,000 in 2025: 5 remote jobs to travel the world - ECOticias.com Nearly One-third of Nursing Assistants Are Immigrants In MN - Here's Why - Nurse.org Solutions3X Opens Medical Coding Center in Hyderabad - Business News This Week Hyderabad: Skill University announces 3 new courses YIS University rolls out 3 job-oriented courses - The Hans India Solutions3X opens medical coding training centre in Ameerpet, second unit in city Ambulance Billing Technician | Jobs | uniondemocrat.com Meet the Monster Truck-Driving ER Nurse! Medical Record Technician (Coder) Job in Naytahwaush, Minnesota - LemonWire 24 Useless College Degrees Facing Dead-End Jobs and Loads of Debt - MSN 24 Useless College Degrees Facing Dead-End Jobs and Loads of Debt - MSN

Medical Coding Jobs

Find your dream Job in Medical Coding

Medical Coding Jobs
News

Ask KHN-PolitiFact: How Can Covid Vaccines Be Safe When They Were Developed So Fast?

The development of the first covid vaccines may have seemed to occur at a dizzying pace. After all, scientists identified a new virus and created vaccines to protect against its most severe effects within a year.

This story also ran on PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

But the research underpinning these vaccines isn’t that new at all, vaccine experts say. Some of it is decades old. This foundation, combined with technical expertise, urgency and financial resources, enabled scientists to pull off the medical marvel.

“The reason it was so fast is money and work,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Leveraging mRNA: A Technique as Old as Millennials

Covid mRNA vaccines use the human body’s natural immune response to its advantage. The shot contains the recipe for making the molecule known as the spike protein, which the covid virus uses to bind to cells. Once the cell receives these instructions, it creates the protein and displays it on its surface. The immune system then spots the unknown protein and makes antibodies to fight it.

The vaccines made by the companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna use this technology, which stems from research that began in the early ’90s, said Dr. Drew Weissman, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. It has been tested against other viruses like influenza. Scientists learned from previous clinical trials and have since worked to perfect the use of mRNA, he said. Previous work on related coronaviruses like SARS helped speed the process.

Weissman and his colleague Katalin Karikó, a senior vice president of BioNTech, are credited with the breakthrough discovery that enabled these vaccines to be safe and highly effective.

“This isn’t new technology,” Weissman said.

Viral Vector Vaccines: A Health Emergency Veteran

The third vaccine being distributed in the United States to protect against severe covid-19 uses viral vector technology to generate an immune response. It contains a weakened form of a different virus that carries instructions for cells to make the spike protein found on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid. The protein appears on the cell’s surface, and the immune system creates antibodies against it.

Like the mRNA vaccines, this technology carries the code for making the spike protein to the cell, said Dr. Ruth Karron, director of the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins University.

“The truck is different,” she said, “but what’s being delivered is very similar.”

Viral vector technology has been studied since the 1970s. These vaccines have been approved for use around the world to immunize people against Japanese encephalitis. Johnson & Johnson, which uses this platform for its covid shot, also created a viral vector vaccine for Ebola after a massive outbreak of the disease in 2019 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Are They Safe?

In addition to existing research, generous resources were allocated to quickly create the covid vaccines, experts said. As of Dec. 2020, the federal government spent $12.4 billion alone on Operation Warp Speed to hasten vaccine development. Drug companies partnered with the National Institutes of Health to tap into its expertise and quickly enroll trial participants.

Perhaps most important, the final clinical trials for the covid vaccines enrolled between 30,000 and nearly 45,000 participants.

“These studies are so much bigger than the studies we do for many licensed vaccines,” Karron said. Some trials for previously approved vaccines have included as few as 3,000 participants, she added.

Dr. Scott Ratzan, who runs a covid-19 vaccine communications initiative called CONVINCE USA at the City University of New York, said pushing certain information has helped assuage fears among the vaccine hesitant. These include highlighting the reality of the virus, comparing the shot’s side effects to other vaccines and showing the vaccines’ effectiveness in millions of people.

Waiting for others to get the shot first was “a fair thing” when they first rolled out, Offit said. However, after nearly 90 million people in the United States have received at least one vaccine dose with no sign of safety issues, he said, the skepticism should be fading away.

“You have your proof in terms of efficacy and safety,” Offit said. If you are still refusing, “then that’s because you’re not a skeptic anymore. You’re a cynic.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Syndicated from https://khn.org/news/article/ask-khn-politifact-how-can-covid-vaccines-be-safe-when-they-were-developed-so-fast/