When Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Wayne Turnage saw an ad on television about participating in the drugmaker Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine trials at George Washington University, he immediately went online to sign up.

“They told me I was the first person to enroll in the trial,” Turnage tells DCist/WAMU.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh also decided to participate, going with a doctor friend to a Rockville office building to join the National Institutes of Health’s trial for the Moderna vaccine. “My doctor friend and I did it together, which was very important to buck up my lack of courage,” says Cheh.

Cheh and Turnage are just two of hundreds of Washingtonians who are participating in Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine trial. Aside from NIH and GW, there are about 90 host sites across the country. The final-stage clinical trials began in late July, and just this week, Moderna announced that early data indicate their vaccine is 94.5% effective against the virus.

Both D.C. officials enrolled because they felt a sense of obligation to participate in trials for a COVID-19 vaccine.

“People are hurting,” Cheh told DCist in September. “This is just a little tiny, tiny thing for me to do, but it was something.”

Turnage, who is Black, volunteered because he wanted to be a model for others. “I wanted to do it to dispel some of the myths Black folks have about this vaccine, these trials,” he says. “And to encourage more African Americans to participate.”

While their experiences participating in the trials were in some ways similar, they also differed at points.

Turnage walked into George Washington University Hospital in August prepared. Prior to his appointment, he received a hefty pack of documents with information about what to expect from the trial, as well as an “extensive” consent form. When he arrived, doctors and nurses described in detail what Turnage was going to experience during the trial.

They also explained that this vaccine is much different than any other one ever created before — unlike other vaccines, Moderna’s doesn’t use any parts of the virus. Instead, it uses genetic code to trigger the immune system into creating antibodies against the virus.

Next, they did a health screening and drew six vials of blood. Turnage then got his first injection. Because it was a blind study, he didn’t (and still doesn’t) know whether the dose was the vaccine or a placebo. Turnage says it was painless.

“I never had an injection before when I didn’t feel it,” he says. “They told me that the technology of needles has so drastically changed that you can barely feel it.”

Turnage says he experienced no noticeable side effects in the immediate days after his first dose; two weeks later, he says he felt fatigued and achy, but isn’t sure whether that was related to the injection.

Moderna’s vaccine requires two injections administered 28 days apart, so Turnage got his second dose in September, though it was a bit after that 28 day period. (In between his doses, he also received a standard flu shot.) After receiving his first shot, Turnage filled out an online questionnaire three to four times a week about how he felt, received “wellness check” calls from GW staff, and gave blood several times for testing.

He also didn’t notice any side effects after the second dose, despite researchers warning participants that they could have more intense reactions like headaches, body aches, fatigue, and sore muscles.

But for Turnage, none of that was an issue.

“I didn’t have any problems. It was all very, very smooth,” he says.

Cheh participated in the clinical trial run at labs run by the NIH, which co-developed the vaccine with Moderna.

While some of her experiences were the same, a few were bit different.

She, too, says there were a “zillion” forms to fill out, and that she was asked to provide a lot of blood. Earlier this week, she quipped to the D.C. Council that she had to donate “vampire-like” amounts of blood.

“Obviously, I was being facetious, but I [do] remember at the time I said, ‘are you leaving me any blood in my body?,'” says Cheh.

Medical professionals took her temperature, measured the oxygen in her blood, and gave her a COVID test. That, she says, was painful. “That was the most rigorous COVID test you can imagine,” Cheh says. “That was the worst part of the whole experience.”

She describes the shot with the first dose as similar to a flu shot. And she did have side effects.

The next morning, Cheh woke up with a headache and aches, pains, and fatigue so intense she could barely get out of bed. But it didn’t particularly worry her, since that’s how she has normally reacted to other vaccines she’s gotten in the past. The symptoms went away in about a day and a half.

“It was unpleasant, but it wasn’t out of the boundaries of what I’ve experienced before,” she says.

In between that first dose and her second one in October, she also had to fill out questionnaires, answer calls from researchers, and give more blood. Her reaction to the second dose was “slightly less” than the first one, but remained unpleasant.

Researchers will continue to monitor Turnage, Cheh, and other vaccine trial participants for two years. That means more questionnaires, calls from doctors, and occasionally giving more blood.

Turnage and Cheh say they are often asked whether they’re willing to continue with the trial. Both remain enthusiastic.

“In for a dime, in for a dollar,” says Cheh.

Turnage says that if the Moderna vaccine does end up going to market and becoming available for the general population, he’s going to ask whether he received the placebo or the vaccine. If he received the placebo, he’s going to be “first in line” for the the vaccine when becomes available for the general population.

“If you are in the placebo group and they’re telling everybody that this thing works and you are walking around unprotected because you are in a study for two more years, you could get killed,” Turnage says.

Overall, both say their experiences participating in the Moderna vaccine trial led them to one conclusion: “I would absolutely recommend that everybody take it,” Cheh says.