An early lesson from the Uganda Ebola vaccine trial: Shots must be ready to go before the next outbreak strikes

(STAT) A clinical trial of vaccines targeting the Ebola Sudan virus is starting this week in Uganda, with first doses going into arms potentially on Tuesday. Already, though, this effort has taught the World Health Organization and partners two important lessons. They’ve learned they can get clinical trials to test countermeasures for rare but dangerous pathogens up and running far more quickly than eight years ago, when a similar effort was launched to test vaccines as Ebola Zaire raced through three West African countries. That effort took more than five months. This one has taken roughly 80 days.