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Updated April 19th, 2021 at 18:48 IST

Oxford to reinfect recovered patients with coronavirus; here's everything you need to know

Healthy young people in the UK, who have had Covid-19, are being asked to volunteer for a trial that will deliberately expose them to the coronavirus.

Reported by: Bhavya Sukheja
UK
Image: AP/Pixabay | Image:self
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Researchers at the University of Oxford on April 19 announced the launch of a human challenge trial in a bid to better understand what happens when people who have already contracted the coronavirus are infected for a second time. The researchers have asked healthy young adults who have had COVID-19 to volunteer for a trial that will deliberately expose them to the pandemic virus. The experts have said that the ultimate aim of the study is to design better treatments and vaccines against COVID-19. So, here is everything you need to know about the human challenge trial. 

All you need to know about the trial

In the study, which will begin this month, researchers will examine what kind of immune response could prevent people from becoming reinfected with COVID-19 and investigate how the immune system reacts to the virus a second time around. Up to 64 people aged 18-30 will spend 17 days in a quarantine unit at a hospital suite and have numerous tests, including lung scans. The volunteers will be re-exposed to the virus, the original strain from Wuhan, China, in a “safe and controlled environment” while the medical team monitors their health. 

The first phase of the study, which will be funded by the Wellcome Trust, will aim to establish the lowest dose of the virus that can take hold and start replicating but produce few or no symptoms. The dose will then be used to infect participants in the second phase of the study, which is expected to start later this year. Volunteers who develop symptoms will then be given an antibody treatment to help them fight off the infection. They will be discharged only when they are no longer contagious. 

 The full length of the research will be 12 months, including a minimum of eight follow-up appointments after discharge. The team explained that a human challenge trial in medical research is a carefully controlled study that involves purposefully infecting a subject with a pathogen or bug, in order to study the effects of that infection.

Shobana Balasingam, Vaccines Senior Research Advisor at Wellcome Trust, said, “The findings could have important implications for how we handle Covid-19 in the future, and inform not just vaccine development but also research into the range of effective treatments that are also urgently needed”. 

She added, “Keeping up the pace of scientific research and development, through crucial studies such as this remain the only way we will truly get ahead of this pandemic and bring it under control”. 

(With inputs from PTI)

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Published April 19th, 2021 at 18:48 IST

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