Moderna announced that the clinical trial for its coronavirus vaccine have hit a roadblock because a contractor failed to recruit enough minorities in the late-stage testing, Reuters reports.
The lack of Black, Latino and Native American volunteers would under-represent those populations, leading to a slower roll-out for the vaccine and leading to gaps in data on how vaccines would impact people with those ancestries.
The 30,000 volunteers enlisted were predominantly white, even though Black Americans are three times more likely to contract the virus and those patients are twice as likely to die after becoming infected. Only 7% of volunteers were Black, far below the 13% in US general demographics.