The UK will begin the world’s first trial of healthy volunteers intentionally infected with coronavirus, after the study received ethical approval.
The so-called study of the human challenge will begin in a month, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said in a statement on Wednesday, with up to 90 people exposed to a very small amount of coronavirus in a safe and controlled environment. Such tests are controversial as they expose healthy volunteers to diseases that can be fatal.
The next stage of the study, which has not yet been approved, will be to administer a coronavirus vaccine to different volunteers and then expose them to the coronavirus. Only vaccines that “have been shown to be safe in clinical trials” will be used. However, researchers are still a “long way” from this stage of the study, according to Terence Stephenson, president of the Health Research Authority, which approved ethics.
Proponents say these studies provide the fastest way to evaluate new vaccines, especially when the world emerges from an active pandemic, said Robert Read, head of clinical and experimental science at the University of Southampton, who belongs to this field and which is part of the team involved in the study.
This initial part of the study will help doctors understand how the immune system reacts to the virus and identify what affects transmission. Remdesivir will be used as soon as volunteers begin to develop symptoms.
Volunteers, who are encouraged to apply to the study, will be between 18 and 30 years old and will be exposed to the variant circulating in the UK from March 2020.
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