⁍ The government-funded project is expected to begin in January at a quarantine facility in London.
⁍ Any trials conducted in the United Kingdom have to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
⁍ The industry has seen discussions in recent months about potentially having to inject healthy volunteers with the novel coronavirus.
– For the first time, people will be infected with a new virus before being injected with a vaccine designed to fight it, the Financial Times reports. The government-funded project, which is expected to begin in January, will involve around 2,000 people who have signed up through a US-based advocacy group, 1Day Sooner. They will be injected with a coronavirus, which has killed dozens of people in the Middle East in recent years, before being given a challenge dose of the virus, according to the FT. The goal of the project is to test the effectiveness of vaccines designed to fight the new virus, which was identified last year. Drugmakers have been working on vaccines to fight the new coronavirus for years, but they have struggled to find people willing to be part of clinical trials. The government-funded project, which will be conducted in a quarantine facility in London, is expected to help solve that problem.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/healthcoronavirus-vaccine-uk/update-1-uk-to-host-human-challenge-trials-for-covid-19-vaccines-ft-idUSL3N2GK3AK