LONDON – Medical ethics authorities in the UK on Wednesday launched controversial studies that will deliberately infect healthy young volunteers with coronavirus in order to better understand the impact of the virus on the human body and accelerate vaccine development.
The trials, called human challenge trials, will be the first in the world to target Covid-19 and will initially involve up to 90 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30, the government said on Wednesday. They will start in London by March, backed by the British government’s $ 47 million funding originally announced in October.
With doctors and scientists standing 24 hours a day, researchers will inject carefully controlled doses of coronavirus into the noses of quarantined volunteers. This set of volunteers will not receive vaccines. The idea is to start with the smallest amount possible, which allows researchers to assess infection levels, symptoms and methods of transmission while trying to ensure the safety of volunteers.
If this goes well, a second phase of the studies is planned to include the use of vaccines – the researchers did not specify which – to test how well it protects against symptoms and possibly transmission. The vaccines would be given to healthy volunteers, who would then intentionally become infected with the coronavirus, again indoors to contain the virus.
Scientific and medical ethics opinions on the proposed studies have been mixed since the UK unveiled its plans in October, with this week’s green light making the UK a pandemic phenomenon. Previous challenging studies have focused on malaria, typhoid, cholera and the flu.