World's first Covid 'challenge' trial to take place in London in January
The first "challenge" trial in the world is expected to start in London in the New Year, but initially white people are more likely to take part because of the increased risk to individuals of other ethnicities.
Up to 90 volunteers at the Royal Free Hospital in the capital will be deliberately exposed to coronavirus in early January in order to help scientists understand the virus better.
The study is being backed by £33.6 million of Government money.
The scientists leading the study said people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds would likely not be eligible to take part in the first instance because those groups have been shown to be at higher risk from Covid-19, theoretically increasing the chances of an adverse event.
Dr Chris Chiu, the principal investigator, said: "It's our priority to as quickly be able to include as wide a diversity of participants as possible, but there is some very clear data from around the world that BAME people may be at higher risk of severe disease and severe outcomes.
"Our approach is that we are not going to exclude BAME people absolutely from this trial, but we will start off with people who we believe are going to be at the lowest risk and then gradually increase a greater diversity of individuals as the trial goes on."
The trial is still waiting for sign-off from an independent ethics committee and regulators. Scientists will aim to find out the lowest dose of virus that causes infection.
Professor Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London, the co-investigator of the human challenge studies project, said: "Watching this enormously dynamic vaccine landscape that is unfolding before us, I think that it is likely that we will get some answers pretty soon [as to] which vaccines might be effective.
"It may be that there will be several vaccines that are effective, perhaps in different groups or in different ways."
CORRECTION: The study in question involves infecting participants with live Covid virus; they will not be vaccinated beforehand and the researchers have no plans to test the Imperial College Covid vaccine, as this article originally wrongly implied. Also the study will be open to other ethnicities, not just to young white people, with diversity likely to increase as the trial advances. We are sorry for the inaccuracies and for not correcting them promptly.
