Melbourne woman participates in COVID-19 vaccine testing

Fran Pickett didn’t really put a whole lot of thought on the downsides of being a human guinea pig for researchers testing for a vaccine for Coronavirus 19.

Not the several hours of paperwork and invasive questions. Not the constant temperature taking. Not even the long needle — yes it was painful — used to push an unknown yellowish-brown substance into her left arm as she turned her head away.

Pickett looked at it all as being part of something bigger than herself: That is helping find a cure for a virus that has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths across the globe, not to mention bulldozing the economy, and wreaking havoc on people’s day-to-day routines and schedules.

“I was actually thinking back to other pandemics, like the 1918 flu or polio in the 1950s,” said Pickett, an architectural consultant who lives in Melbourne. “Wouldn’t it be cool to know your grandparents participated in a vaccine for that? That would be a good legacy. I thought, ‘Why not be part of that?'”

Pickett, 65, is a foot soldier in an army of global volunteers taking part in human vaccine trials for COVID-19. Medical professionals say the testing is unprecedented for its scope and speed, even though most agree that even if a vaccine is found relatively soon, it wouldn’t be rolled out until next year following approval by regulators.

Even then, it would have limited availability initially because COVID-19 has spread and affected so many people.

Still, Pickett said, you must start somewhere, and she has the full support of her family. That family includes four children and three grandchildren.

“It’s been shown safe on animals, so why not?” Pickett chuckled.

It’s accepted now that COVID-19 likely started in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province, sometime last year. It quickly spread to Europe, the United States and elsewhere and seemed to catch world health officials and many countries woefully unprepared for the devastation that followed.

It’s called coronavirus because of crownlike proteins in the virus that attach to host cells. The stickier the spikes, the more efficient the virus is at infecting and spreading.

COVID-19 seems particularly adept at causing deaths and major health issues with older populations and individuals with underlying health problems, though people in every age group have recorded virus symptoms.

Medical researchers jumped in early on testing, building on knowledge developed through other coronavirus research over the decades.

Currently, it’s believed there are about 135 vaccines now in development worldwide in the fight against COVID-19 but there hasn’t been the “Aha” breakthrough yet. That’s why testing continues and larger states with diverse populations (in terms of age and ethnicities) like California, Texas and Florida are popular for researchers looking for vaccine-testing candidates.

Pickett is part of trial by Janssen Pharmaceutica. Her test “cohort,” or group, consists of individuals 65-and-older. Janssen, headquartered in Beerse, Belgium, is owned by Johnson & Johnson.

Because of confidentiality guidelines, Pickett said she doesn’t know a whole lot about her cohort, other than 375 individuals are in it from around the world and 75 of them are being given a placebo.

A placebo is a substance that has no therapeutic effect and is used as a control in testing new drugs. It gives researchers something to compare their results and also helps to eliminate bias in patient-reported outcomes.

The vaccine tests do not include any live virus and it’s not believed to have any serious safety issues attached.

Lisa Coe of Orlando, a 46-year-old owner of small defense contracting company, signed on for a test with Pfizer about two months ago. Joining her were her husband, father-in-law, and the latter’s girlfriend.

Lisa and her father-in-law, a retired Leesburg cardiologist, believe they got injected with the real thing, coming down with aches and chills and a fever for a few days. The other two had no symptoms.

Follow-up tests proved Lisa Coe right as she and her father-in-law tested positive for anti-bodies.

“I’m still kind of like, Oh my God, I have COVID anti-bodies,” Coe said, adding she feels fine now and has no regrets about taking part in the trials.

“Mainly I wasn’t doing it for myself,” she said. “I was concerned about being one of those individuals who might have had the virus and could transmit it to someone else unknowingly.”

Pickett, who answered the call for volunteers after seeing a solicitation on Facebook, wonders if she may have gotten the placebo because she has had no side effects. Optimistically, she hopes that it is because it’s a safe and effective vaccine.

Another participant that started the same day told Pickett she also has had no adverse reactions. The protocols of the blind trial do not allow participants to see their blood tests.

Going to a private lab on Wickham Road in Melbourne for her testing, Pickett will be monitored for a year. Her trial involves a second dose in mid-October. It requires her to keep a medical diary, routinely monitor her temperature, and have a nasal swab test if she experiences any symptoms associated with COVID-19 during the entire year.

There might have been other motivations for Pickett. For one, she knows about local health issues, having served on the board of trustees for Health First. And she currently serves on the board of the Space Coast Health Foundation, an organization that provides grant funding to many area organizations dedicated to health and access to health care.

But there was something deeper.

Her husband, Rob Pickett, died of a rare cancer called leiomyosarcoma on Jan. 5, 2018. Leiomyosarcoma attacks the soft muscle tissue, and in Rob Pickett’s case it spread from his abdomen to his liver.

“He would have been willing to be part of any clinical trial out there if had any chance of helping someone,” Pickett said. “Maybe that that motivated me a little. Maybe it made me be brave.”

Price is director of communications for the Space Coast Health Foundation, a local 501 (c) (3) nonprofit based in Rockledge. The foundation is dedicated to making sure all of Brevard County residents have access to quality health care.