Volunteers are not in short supply for a possible trial run of a future coronavirus vaccine – as of May 18, more than 23,000 people have signed up across 102 countries to become a volunteer. They would literally put their lives on the line to potentially save months in the creation of the vaccine.
In this COVID-19 “Human Challenge” vaccine trial, a group of volunteers would first be injected with a potential vaccine, and a second control group would be injected with a placebo.
After allowing sufficient time for the volunteers who got the vaccine to hopefully build immunities, it’s all challenged — all the volunteers, those with and those without the vaccine, are intentionally contaminated with coronavirus.
It’s risky, potentially even deadly, but it also might be a quicker path to an actual vaccine for the rest of us.
Abie Rohrig, a 20-year-old New Yorker, has seen what the pandemic has done. He signed up online to be a volunteer in the “Human Challenge” vaccine trial.
“Just like the nurses and the doctors on the front line, you know, I’m willing to take some risk myself, that means that we can move through this as, as a nation, and as a world,” Rohrig said.
Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard Epidemiologist, is one of the scientists whose idea of using a challenge vaccine for COVID-19 is now gaining interest from the World Health Organization.
“This could save months off the time required to evaluate a vaccine. The goal is to do the fastest responsible and scientifically valid way of evaluating the vaccine,” Lipsitch said.
Multiple vaccines could be tried at the same time, with controls put in place for proper medical care for all volunteers. And by selecting only young, healthy adults, Lipsitch said the chances of someone dying is extremely low. But, even then, the chance of dying is “not zero,” Lipsitch said, and that is why volunteering for the trial is a heroic act.
Professor Robert Read at the University of Southampton in the UK said he is in favor of the idea, but he insists there would need to be full disclosure.
“This case is different, we’re not able to quantify the risk to the volunteer,” Read said. “And when we take informed consent from them, we will have to say to them that we cannot say exactly what is going to happen to them.”
Despite the risk, more than 23,000 people from more than 100 countries have already signed an online form saying they are interested in becoming volunteers (as of May 18).
That includes John Gentle of Alabama, a U.S. Army veteran, businessman, husband and father of four.
“Yes, I am putting more people directly related to me at a greater risk if something were to go wrong. But I feel like the risk is low,” Gentle said.
So far, the challenge vaccine trial is just hypothetical. The notion of human challenge trial was first raised in the Journal of Infectious Disease in March. Its authors argue the pandemic justifies the use of the risky technique.
If you are part of the few interesting folks that would like to sign up to be a potential volunteer for a human challenge trial, click here.
No comments