Dr. Kristen Marks

A newer vaccine against hepatitis B virus was clearly superior to an older vaccine type in inducing a protective antibody response among people living with HIV who didn’t respond to prior vaccination, according to the results of an international study led by a Weill Cornell Medicine investigator.

Among participants who had hepatitis C and who injected drugs, those treated at a non-stigmatizing “accessible care” treatment center co-located with a syringe service program (SSP) were nearly three times more likely to be cured of the infectious disease compared with those referred out to local clinicians through patient navigation, according to a randomized clinical trial led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

Soon after the first case of COVID-19 was reported in New York City last March, a group of about 10 physician-scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine met to discuss a pressing issue: there were no known treatments for severe cases of the disease.

With the COVID-19 vaccines rolling out across the country and more people getting vaccinated, many are wondering how long it takes for the vaccines to provide protection.

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout is underway, bringing a sense of hope — as well as many questions about safety and who should get the vaccine. To help answer these questions, NewYork-Presbyterian experts address common concerns about the new Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines and explain why they are safe.

As the coronavirus vaccine rolls out across the country, an infectious disease expert answers questions about its safety and when it’s likely to be available to the general public.

Dr. Kristen Marks, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine and associate attending physician at the medical center, leads the team conducting Moderna Therapeutics’s phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center—one of dozens of medical centers around the U.S. where this still-experimental vaccine will be tested. 

As doctors face the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 with a very limited arsenal of treatments, physicians at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian have rapidly mobilized to test candidate drugs in clinical trials.