The United Kingdom’s government has considered exploring clinical trials where volunteers would be exposed to the coronavirus to test its effectiveness, CNN reports.
What’s going on?
The UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy said in a statement that it is working with partners to develop a plan.
- “We are working with partners to understand how we might collaborate on the potential development of a COVID-19 vaccine through human challenge studies,” a government spokesperson said, according to CNN.
- “These discussions are part of our work to research ways of treating, limiting and hopefully preventing the virus so we can end the pandemic sooner,” the spokesperson said.
These “challenge trials” would let researchers give the study subjects the COVID-19 vaccine and then expose them to the coronavirus to see if the vaccine actually works.
According to CNN, similar trials were used to help with smallpox, yellow fever and malaria vaccines.
Will this prove ‘variolation’?
Researchers developed a new theory about the coronavirus, suggesting that your mask might make you immune to the virus, as I wrote about for Deseret.com.
The theory suggests people would receive enough virus through their mask to develop immunity but not get sick.
This process is called “variolation,” which refers to exposure of a pathogen to create immunity. Scientists attempted it with smallpox before it became less accepted due to the ethical concerns.
- The theory can’t be proven without clinical trials that compare outcomes for those who wear masks and those who don’t. And people would need to be exposed to the virus, too.