WHO says ethics committee should oversee COVID-19 vaccine 'human challenge' trials
WHO recommends "human challenge" trials to be reviewed by an ethics committee and "informed consent" to be "rigorous," its spokeswoman said on Tuesday (October 20).
Asked about Britain announcing that young and healthy volunteers will be deliberately infected with COVID-19, to accelerate the development of vaccines for the disease, WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said that "if people are considering this, it must be overseen by an ethics committee and the volunteers must have full consent and they must select the volunteers in order to minimize their risk. Because you will be challenging people with a virus that we do not have a treatment for."
The UK government said it would invest 33.6 million pounds ($43.5 million) in the studies in partnership with Imperial College London, laboratory and trial services company hVIVO, and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. If approved by regulators and an ethics committee, the studies would start in January with results expected by May 2021, the government said.
Britain's hVIVO, a unit of pharmaceutical services company Open Orphan, said on Friday (October 16) it was carrying out preliminary work for the trials.
Using controlled doses of virus, the aim of the research team will initially be to discover the smallest amount of virus it takes to cause COVID-19 infection in small groups of healthy young people, aged between 18 and 30, who are at the lowest risk of harm, the government said. Up to 90 volunteers could be involved at the early stage, it said.
(Source: Reuters)
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