You can earn £4,400 for lying in bed for two weeks in a swanky room, with access to free WiFi and food delivered to your door. So say enthusiastic "flu camp" volunteers, who've been recommending the experience on social media.
Obviously, you have to get the flu, too. Volunteers at these clinical trial camps are infected with the virus and then given the trial treatment or a placebo, and monitored over a fortnight to see how their body responds. But is being a human lab rat and spending all that time alone in a room as easy as it sounds?
A lot of introspection and a lack of fresh air
"Being deliberately infected with a virus may sound scary", said Vice, but firms like hVIVO, which runs FluCamp, say they only recruit people whose health records show that getting the illness is unlikely to have a serious effect. They also screen applicants to make sure their mental health can withstand a two-week period of isolation.
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Once isolated in their room, participants fill in a checklist every morning about their symptoms. "Doctors would come in about four times a day to test your vitals," student volunteer Faith Larkam told Business Insider. "Other than that, you're just left to your own devices."
During her stay, she "binge-watched movies", read a book "in like three hours", did "a lot of introspection" and "banged" out three or four essays for university. She found "the lack of fresh air" and not being able to socialise or exercise increasingly challenging and, "towards the end", she was "desperate to get out".
But she said she has already signed up for a second stay and it's easy to see why. FluCamp's facility in Canary Wharf has "floor-to-ceiling windows" offering views of the Thames, and "ensuite rooms" come with a TV, a PlayStation and "a bell to summon staff" to bring food and drink, said The Telegraph. Other volunteers posting on TikTok have boasted of "feta salad lunches" and "10/10 views".
According to FluCamp, only 50% to 70% of participants develop any symptoms of illness and, for those that do, they are usually mild.
Fast and cost-efficient
Exposing volunteers to a controlled dose of a virus in a quarantined setting, rather than running clinical-field trials over many years, means firms can quickly get a "clear picture" of treatment's efficacy before they move to larger, later-stage studies, said This Is Money.
And it's certainly proving successful for hVIVO. The firm finished 2024 in "rude financial health, with revenue up almost 12% at £62.7 million" and a "rock solid" balance sheet, "with £44.2 million in cash".
