LONDON (Reuters) – Britain became the first country in the world on Wednesday to give the green light for human testing in which volunteers will be deliberately exposed to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
The test, which is due to begin within a month, will see up to 90 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30 years exposed to the least amount of the virus needed to cause the infection, scientists responsible for the plans told reporters at a news conference.
Volunteers will be screened for possible health risks before being allowed to participate and will be kept in quarantine for close monitoring by medical staff for at least 14 days in a specialized facility at London’s Royal Free Hospital.
“The top priority, of course, is the safety of volunteers,” said Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, who is co-leading the project with the UK government’s vaccine task force and the company hVIVO clinic. “None of us want to do this if there is any considerable risk.”
Scientists have been using human challenge tests for decades to learn more about diseases like malaria, flu, typhoid and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.
Test participants will be allowed to return home after the initial 14 days only if “extensive tests” show that they are not infectious, said Chris Chiu of Imperial, the test’s chief investigator.
The goal of this initial work was “to understand how the virus infects people and how it passes so successfully between us,” said Chiu. More testing using challenge models could be conducted in the coming months and years to establish which vaccines and treatments work best, he said.
Volunteers will receive compensation payments of around £ 88 ($ 122) per day during the study, which will also involve follow-up monitoring for one year, said the Chiu team, and the studies will be conducted in a safe and controlled environment and 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 instead of one of the new variants, they said.