NEWS
17/02/2021 10:55 GMT
UK To Infect 90 Healthy Volunteers With Covid In World First 'Human Challenge' Trial

It's hoped the £33.6m study will give doctors a greater understanding of the virus and support the pandemic response.
By Sara C Nelson

The UK is to become the first country in the world to run a study which will see 90 healthy adult volunteers deliberately infected with Covid-19.

Backed by a £33.6m UK government grant, the Human Challenge study will involve establishing the smallest amount of virus needed to cause infection, which will give doctors greater understanding of Covid-19 and help support the pandemic response by aiding vaccine and treatment development.

Due to begin in the next few weeks, it will involve the volunteers being exposed to the virus in a safe and controlled environment. It will use the version of the virus that has been circulating in the UK since March last year, which has been shown to be of low risk in young health adults.


Medics and scientists will closely monitor the effect of the virus on volunteers and will be on hand to look after them 24 hours a day.

Researchers are encouraging people aged between 18 and 30, who are at the lowest risk of complications resulting from coronavirus, to volunteer.


Over many decades, such studies have been performed safely and have played important roles in accelerating the development of treatments for diseases including malaria, typhoid, cholera, norovirus and flu. The trials have also helped researchers establish which possible vaccine is most likely to succeed in phase 3 clinical trials that would follow, usually involving thousands of volunteers.

This initial study will also help doctors understand how the immune system reacts to coronavirus and identify factors that influence how the virus is transmitted, including how a person who is infected with Covid-19 virus transmits infectious virus particles into the environment.


The Royal Free’s specialist and secure clinical research facilities in London are specifically designed to contain the virus. Highly trained medics and scientists will be on hand to carefully examine how the virus behaves in the body and to ensure the safety of volunteers.

The virus being used in the characterisation study has been produced by a team at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust in London, in collaboration with hVIVO with support from virologists at Imperial College London.

https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/covid-study-90-volunteers-infected-world-first_uk_602cf0e4c5b67c32961a26b1

So tell us, for a token, are you taking part in the human challenge vaccine trials??

When will the form to be a volunteer to be use as an experiment be out here in Nigeria?

My country people are ready for the grant plus free visa to the UK.

Nothing do COVID for them body.

Jus imagine if d UK had said dey are looking for volunteers in Africa to carry out dis trials, conspiracy theorists and end time merchants would have been shouting to the high heavens on how it is a plot to reduce their population, give dem mark of the beast or wipe dem off the face of the earth.. While others are researching we are busy with useless conspiracies embarrassing ourselves up and down