LONDON (ANTARA) – British scientists on Monday launched a test by infecting participants who have contracted COVID-19 with the coronavirus again to check their immune response and see if people can become infected again.
In February, Britain became the first country in the world to give the green light for a “challenge trial” in humans, in which volunteers are deliberately infected with COVID-19 to advance research on the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The study launched on Monday differs from the one announced in February.
This study seeks to re-infect people who previously suffered from COVID-19 to deepen understanding of human immunity to the corona virus.
In previous studies, such trials were conducted by infecting people for the first time.
“The information from this trial will enable us to design better vaccines and treatments, and also to understand whether people are protected after having COVID-19, and for how long,” said Helen McShane, University of Oxford vaccinator and lead researcher on the study.
He said the study would help understand what kind of immune response could protect against reinfection.
Scientists have used human challenge trials for decades to learn more about diseases such as malaria, flu, typhus and cholera, and to develop treatments and vaccines to fight these diseases.
The first phase of trials will seek to establish the lowest dose of the coronavirus needed for it to start replicating at around 50 percent.
The second phase of the trial, which begins in the summer, will involve infecting different volunteers with the standard dose.
In the first phase, up to 64 healthy participants aged 18-30 years – who had previously been infected with the corona virus at least three months ago – will be re-infected with the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Participants will then be quarantined for at least 17 days and monitored, and anyone experiencing symptoms will be given Regeneron monoclonal antibody treatment.
Source: Reuters
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Translator: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga
Publisher: Tia Mutiasari
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