UK set to deliberately infect volunteers with coronavirus in world's first "human challenge" study - Global Times

Imperial College London on Tuesday announced that a team of researchers in Britain is set to explore a human challenge study with the virus that causes COVID-19, which is "the first such study anywhere in the world".
The first stage of the Human Challenge Program will explore the feasibility of exposing healthy volunteers to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, according to the college.

The study would recruit volunteers between the ages of 18 and 30 with no previous history or symptoms of COVID-19, no underlying health conditions and no known adverse risk factors for COVID-19, such as heart disease, diabetes or obesity, it said.

The first phase aims to discover the smallest amount of virus it takes to cause a person to develop COVID-19, upon completion of which researchers will then use this human challenge model to analyze how vaccines work in the body to stop or prevent COVID-19, to look at potential treatments and study the immune response.