Volunteers could be paid £3,500 to be infected by a form of coronavirus.

As the race to find a vaccine for the potentially deadly bug continues, volunteers in east London are being paid to endure it.

The willing participants will receive £3,500 to be purposefully infected with the virus and live in quarantine at the Queen Mary BioEnterprises Innovation Centre in Whitechapel.

They will, however, be injected with two common but much less serious strains of the virus, reports the Daily Star .

Hvivo, the company behind the laboratory at Queen Mary, will be infecting 24 volunteers at a time with the 0C43 and 229E strains of the virus.

It is thought these strains will cause mild respiratory symptoms and be much less severe than the coronavirus that is currently spreading around the globe.

While they are different strains, it is thought a vaccine can be developed from this testing that would tackle the destructive virus.

Anyone who has volunteered to take part in this study will have to stay in quarantine for two weeks.

There will be quite a few restrictions placed on the participants during this time, including no exercise or physical contact with other people. They will only be able to eat and drink certain foods.

Any nurses or doctors who work on this study will have to wear ventilators and protective clothes while they are working in the lab or with any material that may be infected with the virus, such as dirty tissues or blood tests.

The UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will have to agree on Hvivo's plans before this experiment can take place.

This testing is part of a $2bn global effort to find a vaccine for coronavirus as more people develop it and die from it .

It's likely that the reward for finding a coronavirus vaccine will be a lot higher than the £1.6bn that French drugmaker Sanofi made after selling the flu vaccine last year.

Over 20 Covid-19 vaccines are currently being developed, according to the World Health Organisation.

Following the experiment, the most effective drugs and vaccines will be chosen, and these will be used on patients who naturally contract coronavirus.

More than 270 people have now tested positive for coronavirus in the UK.

As of 9am on Sunday, 273 people had been diagnosed with Covid-19 - an increase of 67 from the 206 cases confirmed at 7am on Saturday.

It represents the largest day-on-day increase in diagnoses.

More than 23,500 people have been tested for the virus in the UK, with two patients with Covid-19 having died.

Two more cases have been confirmed in Scotland, bringing the total there to 18.

On Saturday night, three more people were diagnosed in Northern Ireland pushing its total to seven, while on Sunday morning it was announced confirmed cases in Wales had risen from two to four.

Supermarkets have started placing restrictions on items including pasta, anti-bacterial wipes and hand soap in a bid to prevent shoppers from stockpiling.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/volunteers-infected-coronavirus-3500-bid-21655442

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