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The UK is the scene of an unpublished covid-19 study that seeks “unique insights” on the coronavirus.
Young and healthy volunteers will be infected with coronavirus to test vaccines and treatments.
This is a “human challenge essay“and it is the first of its kind to be produced in the world.
The study, which received the approval of the biotic committees, will begin in the coming weeks with the recruitment 90 people between 18 and 30 years old.
They will be exposed to the virus in a safe and controlled environment while doctors monitor their health.
The UK has administered doses of a COVID vaccine to more than 15 million people.
Clinical studies have played a vital role in the development of treatments for a number of diseases, such as malaria, typhoid fever, cholera and influenza.
The trial will help scientists determine the smallest amount of coronavirus needed to cause infection and how the body’s immune system reacts.
This will allow doctors to better understand covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, which will aid in the development of vaccines and treatments.
“Unique information”
The “COVID-19 Human Challenge” study is carried out by a partnership between the British Government’s Vaccines Taskforce, Imperial College London, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and the company hVIVO, a pioneer in human viral test models.
“We have secured a series of safe and effective vaccines for the UK, but it is essential that we continue to develop new vaccines and treatments for COVID-19,” said Clive Dix, acting chair of the working group on vaccines.
“We hope this essay offers unique information about how the virus works and help understand which promising vaccines offer the best chance of preventing infection, ”he said.
Analysis by James Gallagher, BBC Health and Science correspondent
We already have highly effective COVID-19 vaccines. So why do we need human trials like this?
First, because they reveal to us things that are almost impossible to discover in the real world.
How much virus is needed to trigger an infection, how does the immune system build its initial defense, or which people will develop symptoms and which will not.
The UK trial will begin by focusing on these fundamental issues.
But there are also new vaccines in the works, and the virus itself is evolving.
By the end of this year, it will be nearly impossible to conduct large-scale COVID vaccine trials in the UK because so many people will have been vaccinated.
But these studies involving only a small number of volunteers will still provide answers to crucial questions, from how new vaccines stack up against their protection against new variants.
For his part, Chris Chiu, chief researcher at Imperial College London, explained who the volunteers they need for the trial are.
“We are asking volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 to join this research effort and help us understand how the virus infects people and how it is successfully transmitted among us,” he explained.
Volunteers will be tested to verify that they are in good health and that they have not been previously infected with the virus.
They will be sprayed with the virus in the nose and then spend 14 days in hospital quarantine, while being closely monitored by a medical team.
Find out how the virus grows in the nose and analyze the early stages of infection in humans before symptoms appear are two of the main goals.
Volunteers will be paid for their time, amounting to approximately 4,500 (approximately approximately US $ 6,200) over a year, which will include follow-up testing.
Initially, to deliberately infect volunteers, the study used the virus that has been circulating in the UK since the pandemic began in March, which is low risk for healthy adults.
Over time, a small number of volunteers will likely receive an approved vaccine and then be exposed to the new variants, helping scientists find more effective strategies, but this phase of the study has not yet been approved.
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