WHO says deliberately infecting volunteers with coronavirus might accelerate vaccine development

The World Health Organization in a new report says intentionally infecting healthy volunteers with the coronavirus might accelerate the development of a vaccine.

A WHO working group outlined the potential benefits of human challenge studies in a report this week, per Bloomberg, saying that this process of infecting volunteers in order to test potential vaccines "can be substantially faster to conduct than vaccine field trials" and may "not only accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development, but also make it more likely that the vaccines ultimately deployed are more effective."

The report goes on to say that these "ethically sensitive" challenge studies must be "carefully designed and conducted in order to minimize harm to volunteers," although it notes that challenge studies for the COVID-19 coronavirus may be "thought to involve higher levels of risk and uncertainty" than others, especially given that "severe disease or death can occur in young adults." Initial studies should be limited to young volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30, WHO adds.

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Peter G. Smith, who co-authored a Journal of Infectious Diseases article on this subject, has suggested that these challenge studies would be at least four months faster than standard trials, Quartz reports, though he noted that "even if a vaccine worked in young people, there would be no guarantee it would work in the same way for elderly people." The Journal of Infectious Diseases article, Quartz notes, says a larger study to determine how the vaccine works in other age and risk groups, which could take several months, should come after a challenge study.

Bloomberg also reports the the chief medical officer at Moderna, which is developing a coronavirus vaccine, recently cast doubt on whether challenge studies would speed up the process, saying, "As is often the case, the devil is in the details."