One country is about to start infecting people with COVID-19 on purpose

[Chris Smith]

• The UK government approved plans to conduct a coronavirus vaccine challenge trial that will involve 90 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 30.
• Volunteers will be quarantined in a hospital ward and inoculated with vaccine candidates before being intentionally exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVD-19.
• The study's goal is to speed up research and determine whether the vaccine candidates are effective at blocking the infection or preventing severe illness.

Discussions about vaccine challenge trials started several months ago when certain vaccine makers were already worrying that there might not be enough COVID-19 cases to allow the research to proceed faster. Without enough exposure to the virus, it's impossible to tell how effective a vaccine candidate might be. Phase 1 trials started in the early months of the pandemic when the caseload was quite high. To determine the efficacy of a vaccine candidate, researchers will follow up on volunteers as they live their regular lives, where they risk random exposure to the virus. The fewer the cases in a community, the longer the researchers have to wait before they can draw conclusions. On the other hand, challenge trials allow drug makers to intentionally infect volunteers with the virus intentionally in a controlled environment and observe whether the vaccine can prevent infection or severe illness.

Challenge trials are a standard medical practice, but they usually involve medical conditions that have known treatments or cures. There’s no cure for COVID-19, and available therapies can’t save all patients. Still, the World Health Organization has already agreed to COVID-19 challenge trials, providing guidelines for interested parties. Separately, volunteers have signed up for such trials by the tens of thousands. Chatter about challenge trials died down a bit until recently, now that multiple vaccine candidates have reached Phase 3 trials. And now, the UK government has approved one such experiment.

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One country is about to start infecting people with COVID-19 on purpose originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 21 Oct 2020 at 10:52:12 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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