British researchers want to infect volunteers with the coronavirus

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A British study will help develop antidotes and contain the pandemic.

To improve research of corona infections, British scientists want to infect volunteers with the virus for the first time. As London’s Imperial College and cooperating institutions announced on Tuesday, the research program will show how high the viral load must be for people to contract the lung disease Covid-19.

In this way, the program should contribute to “curbing the spread of the coronavirus, alleviating its consequences and reducing deaths”. The scientists want to find volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 years without pre-existing conditions such as heart problems, diabetes or obesity. “In this first phase, the goal will be to determine the smallest amount of virus needed for a person to develop Covid-19,” said Imperial College. Once infected, the scientists plan to closely monitor the immune response of the volunteers.

Careful supervision at every stage
The test persons are to be infected with the virus Sars-CoV-2 via the nose, as Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College, told BBC Radio 4. “The great advantage of these studies with volunteers is that we can examine each volunteer very carefully not only during the infection but also beforehand and find out exactly what happens at each stage”.

The study, which involves the British government, a company and a hospital, is scheduled to start early next year. Its results will then be used to develop vaccines and therapies against the novel coronavirus.

“Priority is safety of the test persons
In their communication, the scientists involved tried to take away the fear of a serious illness for potential test persons. “Our top priority is the safety of the test persons,” assured Chris Chiu of the Imperial Infectious Diseases Department. “No study is completely risk-free,” but British researchers have a lot of experience with studies involving deliberate infection of subjects. He and his colleagues would keep the “risks as low as we can,” Chiu stressed.

More than 40 million infections with the novel coronavirus have already been detected worldwide, and almost 1.12 million infected people have died. All over the world, work is currently underway on a vaccine against the pathogen, including in the UK.