UK to infect healthy volunteers as part of vaccine research trial
LONDON » Danica Marcos wants to be infected with COVID-19.
While other people are wearingmasks and staying home to avoid the disease, the 22-year-old Londoner has volunteered to contract the new coronavirus as part of a controversial study that hopes to speed development of a vaccine.
Marcos and other young volunteers say they want to take part to help bring an end to the pandemic after seeing the havoc it has wreaked. The grandparents of Marcos’ best friend died early in the crisis, and as a volunteer for a homeless charity she has seen the struggles of thosewho have lost their jobs.
“So many people (are) struggling right now, and I want this pandemic to be over,” Marcos told The Associated Press. “Every day that goes on, more cases are going on, more people are dying. And if this vaccine trial could mean that this period of trauma for the whole world will be over sooner, I want to help. I want to be a part of that.”
Imperial College London and a group of researchers said Tuesday that they are preparing to infect 90 healthy young volunteers with the virus, becoming the first to announce plans to use the technique to study COVID-19 and potentially speed up development of a vaccine that could help end the pandemic.
This type of research, known as a human challenge study, is used infrequently
because some question the ethics of infecting otherwise healthy individuals.
But the British researchers say that risk is warranted because such studies have the potential to quickly identify the most effective vaccines and help control a disease that has killed more than 1.1 million people worldwide.
“Deliberately infecting volunteers with a known human pathogen is never undertaken lightly, said Professor Peter Openshaw, co-investigator on the study. “However, such studies are enormously informative about a disease, even one so well studied as COVID-19.”
Human challenge studies have been used to develop vaccines for diseases including typhoid, cholera and malaria.
Imperial College said the study, involving volunteers aged 18 to 30, would be conducted in partnership
with the government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and hVIVO, a company that has experience conducting challenge studies. The government plans to invest 33.6 million pounds ($43.4 million) in the research.
Governments around the world are funding efforts to develop a vaccine in hopes of ending the pandemic that has pummeled the global economy, putting millions of people out of work.
Forty-six potential vaccines are already in human testing, with 11 of them in late-stage trials — several are expected to report results later this year or in early 2021.
The Imperial College partnership plans to begin work in January, with results expected by May. Before any research begins, the studymust be approved by ethics committees and regulators.