British Covid trial deliberately infecting young adults found to be safe

The world's first "human challenge" trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to Covid-19 to advance research into the disease was found to be safe in healthy young adults, leaders of the study said on Wednesday.

The data supports the safety of this model and lays the groundwork for future studies to test new vaccines and medicines against Covid-19 using this kind of trial by the end of this year, the team added.

Open Orphan is running the project, launched last February, with Imperial College London, Britain’s vaccines task force and Orphan's clinical company— hVIVO.

Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhoid and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines against them.

The Imperial trial exposed 36 healthy male and female volunteers aged 18-29 years to the original SARS-CoV-2 strain of the virus and monitored them in a quarantined setting. They will be followed up for 12 months after discharge.

No serious adverse events occurred, and the human challenge study model was shown to be safe and well tolerated in healthy young adults, the company said.