LONDON – The UK medical ethics authorities on Wednesday gave the green light to controversial studies that will deliberately infect young, healthy volunteers with coronavirus with the aim of better understanding the virus’s impact on the human body and speeding up vaccine development.
The trials, called human challenge trials, will be the first in the world to target Covid-19 and will initially have up to 90 volunteers aged between 18 and 30, the government said Wednesday. They will start in London in March, backed by $ 47 million in UK government funding initially announced in October.
With medics and scientists on hand 24 hours a day, researchers will inject precisely controlled doses of coronavirus into the noses of quarantined volunteers. These volunteers did not receive any vaccines. The idea is to start with the smallest possible amount that allows researchers to measure infection levels, symptoms, and methods of transmission while trying to ensure the safety of the volunteers.
If that goes well, a second phase of trials is planned using vaccines – the researchers haven’t specified which ones – to test how well they protect against symptoms and possible transmission. Vaccines would be administered to healthy volunteers, who would then be deliberately infected with coronavirus, again in locked rooms to control the virus.
Scientific and medical ethical views on the proposed studies have been mixed since the UK unveiled its plans in October, with the green light this week that the UK is a pandemic outlier. Previous challenge studies have focused on malaria, typhoid, cholera and flu.