UK tests will infect healthy volunteers
LONDON — Britain will become the first country to deliberately infect healthy volunteers with the coronavirus, now that the country’s ethics body has approved a “human challenge trial.”
The effort, funded by the British government, aims to accelerate scientific understanding of vaccines and treatments.
The first stage will begin within the month and see up to 90 adults, aged 18 to 30, exposed to the coronavirus “in a safe and controlled environment” to gauge the smallest amount of virus needed to cause infection, the government said in a statement Wednesday.
Infecting healthy people with a potentially deadly virus — even in small doses and controlled settings — is controversial. And some have questioned whether there’s a need, given the rapid authorization and rollout of highly effective vaccines. More than 15 million people in the United Kingdom have already received at least one “jab,” as a vaccine shot is called here.
Clive Dix, the head of Britain’s vaccine task force, said, “We have secured a number of safe and effective vaccines for the U.K., but it is essential that we continue to develop new vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.
“We expect these studies to offer unique insights into how the virus works and help us understand which promising vaccines offer the best chance of preventing the infection.”
Robert Read, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Southampton, said the current vaccines, while good against most of the strains circulating, “may not actually be the last vaccines that we use globally.” The human challenge trials could “give ourselves the potential to test new vaccines very quickly, and that’s really the primary purpose of this effort.”
When the trial gets underway, volunteers will be infected via droplets squirted up the nose and then monitored closely during a hospital stay. In addition to regular blood and heart rate tests, patients will be given scratch-and-sniff cards, to detect loss of smell, and cognitive tests on a tablet, lead researcher Christopher Chiu said.
The volunteers in the first study will receive about 4,500 pounds ($6,243) for their participation over the course of the study, which will involve 17 days of quarantining at the Royal Free Hospital in north London and follow-ups over 12 months.
Andrew Catchpole, chief scientific officer for hVIVO, a clinical research organization that is recruiting volunteers, said that while “thousands” have offered to participate, the study is still looking for recruits who have not yet been exposed to the virus and who can pass health screening tests.