UK to Expose Healthy Volunteers to COVID in World’s First ‘Human Challenge’ Study.
On Feb. 17, the country's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) revealed that the trial has received ethics approval.
Up to 90 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 will be infected with coronavirus.
The BEIS said the study will play a "key role in developing effective COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.".
Challenge trials have previously been used for cholera, typhoid, malaria and influenza.
Some critics worry about deliberately exposing the volunteers to a virus without a sure-fire treatment.
Out of extreme caution, new coronavirus variants will not be used for the study.
The version of the virus that's been in circulation since March of 2020 will be utilized since it "has been shown to be of low risk in young healthy adults.".
Not only can human infection studies
speed up vaccine development, but data
from this study will provide key insights
into how Covid-19 affects us from as soon
as we are infected, which will potentially
inform research into new treatments, Dr. Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at UK-based global charitable foundation Wellcome, via CNN