LONDON (Reuters) – Britain on Wednesday became the first country in the world to pave the way for human challenge trials in which volunteers will be deliberately exposed to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The trial, which begins within a month, will see up to 90 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 exposed to the smallest amount of viruses needed to cause infection, scientists behind the plans told reporters in a newsletter.
Volunteers will be screened for possible health risks before they may participate, and kept in medical custody for medical staff for at least 14 days in a specialist unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
‘The absolute priority, of course, is the safety of volunteers,’ says Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, who co-chairs the UK Government’s vaccination task force and clinical firm hVIVO. “None of us want to do that when there is a significant risk.”
Scientists have been using human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhus and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.
Participants in the trial will be allowed to go home only after the initial fourteen days if an extensive test shows they are not contagious, said Chris Chiu, Imperial’s investigator.
The purpose of this initial work was ‘to understand how the virus infects humans and how it is so successfully transmitted between us,’ Chiu said. Further trials using the challenge models could then be done in the coming months and years to determine which vaccinations and treatments work best, he said.
Volunteers receive a fee of approximately £ 88 ($ 122) per day for the duration of the study. It will also include a year-long follow-up monitoring, Chiu’s team said. The studies will be done in a safe and controlled environment. will reduce any risk.
To make the trial as safe as possible, the version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has been circulating in England since March 2020 will be used as one of the new variants.