On Apr. 17, 2020, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) announced that older adults were being enrolled in the first trial of the first experimental vaccine candidate for the COVID-19 virus. As the trial expanded to include a total of 105 healthy adults, KPWHRI’s vaccine research team included 20 healthy Seattle-area participants age 71 years and older.

Another 10 participants in that age group will be enrolled at NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center clinic at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD, according to a news statement from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which funds the trial. And 30 participants age 56–70 years will enroll at the NIH and Emory University in Atlanta. But no one in the 56–70-year age group will enroll at KPWHRI.

On March 16, KPWHRI gave the first-ever injection of an investigational vaccine against the 2019 novel coronavirus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. Since launching the trial of the mRNA-1273 vaccine, KPWHRI has finished enrolling 28 participants age 18–55 here. Meanwhile, 17 are being enrolled at Emory University, for a total of 45 in that age group.