UK plans to inoculate patients with Covid-19 to test vaccine
A patient receives a flu shot (illustrative image).
Warren Ruda / Standard-Speaker via AP
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
According to the Financial Time newspaper, the British authorities are preparing to launch the first “human infectious challenge” for testing vaccines against Covid-19.
Publicity
Read more
In
the global race for the Covid-19 vaccine
, anything that can save time is welcome.
The United Kingdom would thus be ready to carry out a human infectious challenge, a technique which consists in inoculating the virus in healthy volunteers, to test the effectiveness of the vaccines.
But this practice has not been relevant for decades, which explains the astonishment of Professor Jean-Paul Sthal, infectious disease specialist at Grenoble University Hospital.
“
It's a practice that has been abandoned for 70 years.
We stopped this practice of inoculating a disease in humans, it is really something that is outside current scientific practice,
explains the doctor.
In other words, people are no longer inoculated with a dangerous disease without any guarantee that a vaccine will protect them.
We risk killing people with that, and there is no more treatment so I would be surprised if an ethics committee would agree to a practice of this kind.
"
The UK trial is set to start in January 2021, but voices are already rising against a method that raises ethical questions.
Our selection on the coronavirus
•
Listen to our
Coronavirus Info
column
•
Our
explanations
:
→
What are the persistent symptoms of Covid-19?
→
Young people and Covid-19
: health authorities concerned
→
Immunity to Covid-19 would be short-lived
→
Promising results for the vaccine against the coronavirus
•
How to make a mask and use it well
•
See also the
records
of
RFI Knowledge
on Covid-19
→
Birth of a pandemic
→
Daily proof
→
The history of epidemics
→
Science facing Covid-19
→
The geopolitical consequences
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
UK
Coronavirus
Health and medicine