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Morgan Duerden
AMARILLO, Texas (KVII) — The race for a COVID-19 vaccine is in full swing.

Drug companies Pfizer and Moderna are in the last phase of trials.

Tia Huggins works as a director of care coordination at Imperial Beach Health Center in the San Diego area. When one of the doctors sent out an email asking if anyone wanted to participate in a COVID-19 trial, Huggins said it sounded like a fun thing to do.

“I had the first vaccine on Monday of last week. There will be two vaccines that will be three weeks apart,” Huggins said. “You can’t even see that I had it, it was a little sore the first day, and about the first couple of days, I felt really fatigued. That’s about it. It wasn’t a big deal, and I’m not even sure if I had it because I could have been fatigued from something else.”

Huggins isn’t sure if the vaccine made her tired or not because she along with 30,000 others don’t know if they got the vaccine or the placebo.

She did sign a 28-page bill of rights document.

“Headache, tiredness, chills, loss of appetite, muscle aches, joint aches, increased body temperature, sweating, those are the possible side effects,” Huggins said. “Then at the site of injection, redness, itching, pain, tenderness swelling. And if you have any allergic reaction, like if people have severe swelling of the face or lips, shortness of breath like anaphylactic or a seizure, those are like the worst that could happen.”

Participants visit the doctor to receive the first vaccine and three weeks later for the second vaccine

After six months, 12 months and 24 months their blood is tested for antibodies. For the next two years, they will be recording their symptoms in an app on their phones weekly.

Huggins said she wasn’t nervous to receive the vaccine.

“I worked at one point in my nursing career worked in hospice, and I always think, ‘When it’s your time it’s your time, it’s alright,’ so I’m not even worried about dying,” Huggins said.

I think it’s sort of good to be on the forefront. I feel like I’m making a contribution.

Participants receive a stipend of $125 per doctors visit and $5 weekly for recording in the app.

Once a vaccine is available to the public, the study will be unblinded, letting participants know if they had the vaccine or not. -Abc News