Name: How COVID-19 human challenge trials work -- and why I volunteered | Sophie Rose
Uploaded: 2020-12-02T18:10:10.000Z
Duration: 6 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

and ethical considerations around human challenge trials

I made what many perceive as a risky decision.

I volunteered to be deliberately infected with COVID-19.

This infection would be part of what is called a human challenge trial,

where young, healthy people are given a vaccine

and are deliberately exposed to the virus that causes COVID-19.

These trials help researchers figure out more quickly

because today, I'm going to speak to you for six minutes.

roughly 1,250 people will be confirmed infected with COVID-19.

And then this pattern will repeat hour after hour and day by day,

until we're able to vaccinate most of the eight billion people

Scientists have been working around the clock

But what should we do when the human cost of waiting for those vaccines

This is where human challenge trials come in.

They're different from the traditional phase three vaccine trials

where people are given a vaccine or placebo

and asked to go about their everyday lives.

Here, researchers have to wait to see how many people in each group

we don't have enough data to know whether a vaccine is working.

Finding an effective vaccine with this method

instead of waiting for people to get sick.

a challenge trial relies on just 50 to 100.

when people are exposed and develop disease,

these trials also allow us to gather data

about the early stages of infection and our immune response.

This data is impossible to gather in any other way,

especially for people who become infected but never show symptoms.

This knowledge is important for designing policies

The time saved translates into precious months' head start

getting us more working COVID-19 vaccines faster.

even though recent phase three results sound encouraging.

The arrival of the first vaccine is going to be a monumental breakthrough.

It just isn't quite the fairytale ending we're all hoping for.

because we just don't have the infrastructure needed

to immunize all eight billion people on the planet with just one kind.

Each type of vaccine requires its own special process and equipment

If we had multiple working COVID-19 vaccines,

we could make use of all of our equipment at the same time.

Some of the leading candidates need to be kept extremely cold

especially in countries where there isn't reliable electricity

Scientists have been using human challenge trials

They've sped up the development of vaccines against typhoid and cholera,

and they've helped us better understand how immunity develops

to things like the flu, malaria and dengue.

We've even used them for other types of coronavirus before.

about whether challenge trials are too risky.

I happen to think that those risks are worth taking.

A challenge trial would only recruit young and healthy participants --

Fewer than one percent of people in that age-group

need to be taken to hospital after becoming infected with COVID-19.

So it would likely be even lower in a challenge trial,

that participants have no preexisting conditions.

The risk of a young healthy person dying of COVID-19

That means for every 100,000 20-year-olds who become infected with COVID-19,

If I were to give birth in the United States,

my risk of dying would be higher than that.

Or you could choose to think about it this way.

I wouldn't hesitate for a moment before I offered her mine.

And if I can take on that risk to benefit a loved one,

it makes sense to allow people to take on a similar risk

that would benefit not just their loved ones,

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How COVID-19 human challenge trials work -- and why I volunteered | Sophie Rose

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