I am reading conflicting information on this.
In a supposed Associated Press Exclusive, a report went out March 16th saying:
U.S. researchers gave the first shots in a first test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine Monday, leading off a worldwide hunt for protection even as the pandemic surges.
With careful jabs in the arms of four healthy volunteers, scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle began an anxiously awaited first-stage study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine
This came to my attention as BBC News reported a day after, that US volunteers are testing the first vaccine.
Four patients received the jab at the Kaiser Permanente research facility in Seattle, Washington, reports the Associated Press news agency.
Yet, Time says (emphasis mine):
The first vials were sent to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, which will ready the vaccine for human testing as early as April.
They also mention testing a drug called remdesivir that had been developed for Ebola, on a patient infected with the virus.
Volunteers will be randomly assigned to receive either the drug or a placebo intravenously for 10 days, and they will have blood tests and nose and throat swabs taken every two days to track the amount of virus in their bodies.
The reason for trialling remdesivir is because:
Remdesivir showed encouraging results among animals infected with two related coronaviruses, one responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and another for causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
Gilead - the developers of the drug - have reported of phase 3 testing of remdesivir on approximately 1000 patients.
So has vaccination trials started in a separate research lab in Seattle, or is this another misinformation report by the press?