Scientists Want To Speed Up COVID-19 Vaccine Trials By Infecting Human Volunteers With Virus

In an open letter to Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, more than 100 prominent scientists called for healthy human volunteers to be infected with the coronavirus speet vaccine trials.

In the letter, 1 Day Sooner, an organization that advocates for human trials, said, “The rationale for human challenge trials is that they can greatly accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.”

1 Day Sooner and its supporters, which include more than 2,000 volunteers who also signed the letter, said the human trials would fast-track a vaccine, which outweighs the risk of performing these challenge trials.

The organization is also urging the U.S. government to authorize the vaccine trials and said, “If challenge trials can safely and effectively speed the vaccine development process, then there is a formidable presumption in favor of their use, which would require a very compelling ethical justification to overcome.”

The human trials for the vaccine already have the support of 35 members of the House of Representatives.

The World Health Organization has said human test trials are ethical when they meet certain criteria, but protections need to be put in place. These protections include volunteers that are young and healthy, and open to receiving high-quality medical care with frequent monitoring.

Four vaccines currently are under trial among some 150 under development. The first phase 3 trial began enrolling volunteers this week.

Global cases of the coronavirus have reached 13,589,273 with 584,990 deaths worldwide, according to John Hopkins University.