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Researchers at Leiden University Medical Center are preparing for a potential COVID-19 “human challenge trial,” in which willing volunteers would be deliberately exposed to the coronavirus under controlled conditions to test vaccines and study the disease. Researchers have not yet decided to conduct the trial, which would still need regulatory approval to begin.

240 Dutch have already expressed interest in volunteering for such a trial with 1Day Sooner, a non-profit organization advocating for COVID-19 human challenge trial volunteers. 1Day Sooner released the following statement about the trial:

 

“1Day Sooner supports LUMC’s preparation for a COVID-19 human challenge trial. These studies may be essential to developing enough proven vaccines to vaccinate the whole world in 2021, not just the wealthy.

We appreciate researchers at LUMC incorporating the perspectives of 1Day Sooner volunteers in the design of this trial and including 1Day Sooner Director of Operations and Organizing Julia Murdza as Volunteer Representative in the planned trial protocol. We look forward to continuing to work with LUMC to ensure that any challenge trial is as ethical and impactful as it can be.”

 

Meta Roestenberg, a LUMC researcher preparing for the trial, added: “Such a study can be important in answering questions we still have about COVID-19: How long will you stay protected after an infection? How do we compare vaccines? How many antibodies are you producing? How much virus load causes an infection in which cases? You can answer such questions with this research.”

Professor Robert Sauerwein, Chief Scientific Officer at TropIQ Health Sciences, noted that “controlled human infections in the past have proven to be of great value in the combat against major human infectious diseases. A controlled human COVID-19 infection is timely and will contribute to the most needed rapid development of drugs and vaccines. Ensuring safety of volunteers will be a key objective.”

The World Health Organization has released strict ethical guidelines for how to conduct COVID-19 human challenge trials, and researchers in the United Kingdom plan on conducting a similar trial in January 2021