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RIAU ONLINE, LONDONA total of 4,600 people in 52 countries signed up to be consciously infected with the novel coronavirus Sars-Cov-2 that triggered the Covid-19 outbreak, with the aim of accelerating the development of the deadly vaccine against the virus.
An organization called 1 Day Sooner encourages a controversial approach to developing vaccines called human challenge trials (HCT). This approach is believed to accelerate the availability of effective Covid-19 vaccines.
So far, more than 70 potential Covid-19 vaccines are being developed worldwide. But the vaccines will only be available before 2021 because they have to go through several tests that take months.
The Movement 1 Day Before, based on the idea of Nir Eyal from Rutgers University and Peter G. Smith from the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, and Mark Lipsitch from Harvard University in the United States, want reduce these procedures.
For the record, the last name, Lipsitch, was widely discussed in Indonesia because last February it was said that the new coronavirus was already in Indonesia and the government was unable to detect it.
“Vaccines are our ticket to get out of this crisis. If we can have vaccines faster, we can save millions of people from the corona virus, other diseases and hunger on a large scale,” Eyal said as reported by Haaretz.
The three scientists formulated their ideas about HCT in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, published in late March.
Slow development of vaccines
The vaccine development standards in the world are very long, especially when entering the final stage of testing to verify the efficacy of a vaccine or phase III test.
Vaccines generally begin to be developed in laboratories. After that, the scientists tested its effectiveness in research tubes and in animals. Animals will be exposed to viruses and the efficacy of the vaccine will be observed if the experimental animals are not infected.
After that, the vaccine candidate enters the first phase of the clinical trial: testing the vaccine in humans. In this phase, vaccine candidates are administered to a small number of people, and scientists will examine the negative side effects of the vaccine.
If this phase is completed and the researchers see an effect on the voluntary immune system, then efficacy trials will begin. In this phase, the volunteers are more numerous and are divided into two groups.
The first group will receive a candidate vaccine that is being developed. The second group will receive a placebo vaccine, other injections that do not contain the vaccine. But all the volunteers won’t know that they are receiving a real vaccine candidate or that they are simply being injected with a placebo.
The two groups are then invited to return to their respective locations while observing the scientists within a certain period to determine the difference in infection rates and the amount of virus particles in their bodies.
This whole process can go on for months and this is where the benefits of the controversial HCT approach lie.
In the HCT approach, volunteers will not be left alone, but will be intentionally exposed to new coronaviruses so that the efficacy of potential vaccines is known more quickly.
Pros and cons
HCT itself is not new to the world of vaccines. Edward Jenner, the inventor of the British vaccine, also used this approach when making the world’s first smallpox vaccine in 1796. He deliberately exposed the smallpox virus to his gardener’s son who was only 8 years old.
Currently, the development of vaccines with HCT detection is still ongoing, but only for non-serious types of diseases. Some vaccines that have been recently developed by the HCT method are dengue and typhoid vaccines.
Countries of the world also have different policies regarding HCT. Great Britain, for example, HCT is not considered taboo. But in the United States, the HCT approach is considered too risky.
But amid the Covid-19 outbreak, as many as 35 U.S. congressmen have signed an affidavit that encourages the drug regulatory agency (FDA) to authorize the HTC method to develop the Covid-19 vaccine.
Opponents of HCT say there is still much unknown about Covid-19. They also say that certain vaccines can actually trigger the disease, rather than prevent it. Some question ethics, because the coronavirus is deliberately administered to healthy people.
According to Eyal, on the other hand, HCT has at least three advantages: firstly, the number of volunteers is very low (around 100 to 200 people), so if they are sick they can still be easily managed by the hospital.
Second, the risk of complications from vaccines is lower because volunteers are placed in isolation and closely monitored. Third, volunteers are aware that they will not pass the virus on to others, including those they love.
Also, Eyal explained, vaccine development in recent years has often stalled halfway because outbreaks that were successfully treated were faster. For example, when the Ebola and Sars outbreaks occurred.
“Currently, in China, the Covid-19 outbreak has started to decrease and it is not yet known if there are still volunteers to test this vaccine. In the HCT approach, the results will be achieved in a short time,” he emphasized. This article has been published in Suara.com
