World's first COVID human challenge trial found to be safe in young adults

LONDON: The world's first human challenge trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to COVID-19 to advance research into the disease was found to be safe in healthy young adults, one of the companies running the study said on Wednesday.

The data supports the safety of this model which could theoretically provide a "plug and play" platform for testing therapies and vaccines using the original COVID-19 strain as well as variants of the virus, Open Orphan, which carried out the study, said in a statement.

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Open Orphan is running the project, launched a year ago, with Imperial College London, the UK government's vaccines task force and the clinical company hVIVO.