LONDON (Reuters) – Britain became the first country in the world on Wednesday to approve human challenge trials in which volunteers will deliberately expose themselves to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The trial, which will begin in a month, will see up to 90 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 exposed to the minimum amount of virus needed to cause infection, the scientists behind it said. of the plans in an information session.
Volunteers will be screened for possible health risks before they are allowed to participate and will be kept in quarantine for strict monitoring by medical staff for at least 14 days in a specialist unit at Royal Free Hospital in London
“The top priority, of course, is the safety of volunteers,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, who leads the project with the UK government’s vaccine working group and the ‘hVIVO clinical company. “None of us wants to do this if there is an appreciable risk.”
Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, the flu, typhus and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.
Trial participants will only be able to return home after the initial 14 days if thorough evidence proves they are not infectious, said Chris Chiu, chief investigator of the trial.
The goal of this initial work was to “understand how the virus infects people and how it happens so successfully among us,” Chiu said. Then, other trials with challenge models could be conducted in the coming months and years to determine which vaccines and treatments work best, he said.
Volunteers will receive compensation payments of about GBP 88 ($ 122) per day for the duration of the study, which will also involve a one-year follow-up, according to Chiu’s team, and the studies will be conducted in a safe and controlled environment. will minimize any risk.
To make the test as safe as possible, the version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has been circulating in England since March 2020 will be used, rather than one of the new variants, they said.