Thought of the Day - February 25 - The UK COVID Challenge

When the first round of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were being developed and trialed the majority of the world's population had not yet been exposed to the virus. That meant there were plenty of "virgin volunteers". Now vaccine makers, those that are still in early trials and those who are working on a new and improved version, have a real challenge. They now not only have to find trial candidates (ones that have not been exposed, nor had the vaccine) but also that these candidates represent the population at large and thus provide statistically meaningful data on post-vaccine side-effects and infection.

As mentioned before, with South Africa's decision not to roll out their vaccine in light of what is being called the South Africa variant, and the balking of the EU concerning the elderly, AstraZeneca is under a lot of pressure to re-confirm their existing product efficacy or accelerate the delivery of the new-and-improved version. Indeed, I was wrong in suggesting that Canada would be approving the AstraZeneca vaccine last week as planned; that obviously has not happened. And, I suspect Canada is not the only country now taking a wait-and-see attitude toward AstraZeneca ( Thought of the Day - February 15 - Vaccine Wars It's a Madhouse ).

Well, it seems the UK government is the first country to officially agree to a vaccine maker's request to purposely infect precious remaining "virgin volunteers" to both speed-up and improve the accuracy of trials of AstraZeneca's new cocktail.

While the risk of death for the 90-odd healthy "volunteers" is minuscule, there is a real possibility some may be scarred from infection or become "Long Haulers" ( Thought of the Day - December 2 - Update on "Long Hauling" ). Also, this could be the tip-of-the-iceberg as vaccine makers look to expand their volunteer base to include the young and the old, as the first wave does not represent them. So, on the one hand, these UK COVID Vaccine Challenge "volunteers" should be considered heroes, but only time will tell if this is also true concerning the policymakers.

Cheers

Cliff