With Thousands Dying Daily, Can We Try Human Challenge to Get Vaccine Ready Now?

Covid 19 vaccine

The Muslim Times has the best collection of articles for the war against Covid 19, especially the vaccines.

Why people are volunteering to get Covid-19

A controversial plan could get us a vaccine sooner.

Source: Vox

By Laura Bult

With thousands of people dying of Covid-19 every day, the sooner a vaccine can be deemed safe and effective, the better. But vaccine development is a lengthy process that isn’t easy to rush. In part, that’s because of the final step in testing any vaccine: the phase III trial.

Phase III trials require tens of thousands of volunteers, each of whom get either a placebo or an experimental vaccine. Then vaccine developers have to wait until a statistically significant number of them, going about their lives normally, eventually get naturally infected. This step alone can often take years.

When it comes to Phase III trials for a Covid-19 vaccine specifically, there are extra concerns relating to the reality of fluctuating infection rates throughout the world, making it difficult to set up a successful trial where participants are likely to get naturally infected.

The Oxford University vaccine researchers have already had to change the location of their Phase III trial from the UK — where, in June, rates of infection had fallen — to Brazil and South Africa, where rates had started to surge. A team in China did something similar, changing the location of their Phase III trial from mainland China to the United Arab Emirates.

In light of those concerns, some epidemiologists and scientists are calling for something called a human challenge trial. Instead of chasing the moving target of infection rates and waiting for participants to get sick naturally, a human challenge trial involves a small group of young, healthy participants becoming deliberately infected in a lab setting. The challenge study alone could take as little as a month, but it would need to happen after a trial to determine the correct dosing of a virus, and before a larger scale safety study. But all of that could still be faster than a typical Phase III trial.

This isn’t a new concept. Human challenge trials have been used to develop vaccines or treatments for lots of diseases, like choleratyphoidmalariainfluenza, and common cold viruses. But what sets Covid-19 apart from those diseases is that it currently has no effective treatment. Because it’s so new, we also aren’t fully aware of its long-term health effects. Unlike other human challenge trials, a Covid-19 challenge trial would entail a risk of serious illness — and even death.

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The best of the Muslim Times’ collection for war against Covid 19:

In this day and age, understanding bacteria and viruses and developing vaccines are national security issues. In my view sizable part of every country’s defense budget should be spent in these pursuits rather than making tanks and other weapons.

For the latest news about drugs and vaccines’ trials please go to: Pharmaceutical-Technology

For the latest health news from BBC, Please click here

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The Muslim Times has the best collections in the war against Covid 19 as we are collecting from all the established sources

All of humanity are intimate neighbors: Coronavirus proves it once again

Praise be to God for the Miracle of Our Immune System

USA: 15-minute coronavirus test is here

Does the Ordinary Soap Kill Coronavirus?

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For the number of cases and epidemiology in each country go to: WorldOMeters

DAILY NEW CASES AND DEATHS IN US, CDC SITE

Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker – The New York Times

Categories: The Muslim Times, Vaccine

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