Sacramento has been selected as a site for a COVID-19 vaccine trial. Both UC Davis Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente are participating in the vaccine trial through a partnership with Pfizer.The trial will span 120 locations with a goal of including 30,000 applicants worldwide. “What we want the community to know is that this is really important research. It’s a first step in developing a vaccine for COVID,” UC Davis Medical School Dean Allison Brashear said. UC Davis Medical Center explained it is focusing on enrolling participants who are Latinx and Black -- communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19. “Anybody 18 to 55 is in the first group and then shortly thereafter it will be individuals over 55. And, we want people who are reasonably healthy,” Brashear explained. Kaiser Permanente is looking for applicants who are between 18 to 85 years old and generally healthy but are considered high-risk due to employment, a living situation or being part of a community considered at-risk for COVID-19.“We’re not injecting any of the viral proteins themselves. We aren’t injecting any of the virus into individuals,” said Nicola Klein, with Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center. “But the MRNA -- what’s called nucleic acid technology MRNA -- and that includes DNA vaccines, which you may have also heard about. This is a new technology for vaccine. There are no currently licensed vaccines that are developed using this technology. But, it is the genetic material. It can’t replicate on its own or do anything by itself.”Kaiser Permanente is also part of another COVID-19 vaccine trial, co-developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Moderna. UC Davis explained if the vaccine candidate’s success continues, regulatory review can happen as early as October. If approved, Pfizer and BioNTech plan to supply up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and approximately 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.