COVID-19: Young people who have had coronavirus will receive £ 5,000 for being deliberately re-exposed to the virus | UK News

Young people who have already had COVID-19 are going to be deliberately exposed to the virus for the second time – in a new study that aims to see how their immune systems respond.

The University of Oxford’s “human challenge” trial also hopes to find out what dose of coronavirus is needed to cause reinfection, and what that may mean to develop protective immunity to the disease.

People between the ages of 18 and 30 who have been naturally infected with COVID will be recruited and re-exposed to the virus in a safe and controlled environment.

Participants will be quarantined for 17 days and cared for by researchers in a hospital until they are no longer at risk of infecting others, and they will receive just under £ 5,000 at payment title.

Recent research has suggested that a previous infection may not fully protect young people in the future, with an observational study in the United States indicating that 10% of participants ended up being re-infected.

Human challenge studies have played a key role in further developing treatments for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, cholera and influenza.

Chief researcher Professor Helen McShane said: “Provocative studies tell us things that other studies cannot because, unlike natural infection, they are tightly controlled.

“When we re-infect these participants, we will know exactly how their immune system responded to the first COVID infection, exactly when the second infection occurs and how many viruses they were infected with.

“In addition to improving our basic understanding, it can help us design tests that can accurately predict whether people are protected.”