Volunteers Offered $4,500 To Be Infected With Coronavirus In Bid To Find Vaccine
LONDON (CBS Local) -- In the race to develop a vaccine for the rapidly-spreading coronavirus, scientists in Great Britain are looking for 24 brave volunteers.
Hvivo, which owns the Queen Mary BioEnterprises Innovation Centre in east London, is looking for volunteers willing to be injected with the 0C43 and 229E strains of the coronavirus as part of research into the development of a vaccine.
These strains are far less serious than the COVID-19 strain currently spreading across the world, giving them similar respiratory symptoms.
Volunteers selected for the program will be compensated to the tune of £3,500, or about $4,500, according to the Daily Star and the Daily Mail.
Volunteers will be kept in isolation and on a restricted diet for two weeks with no exercise or physical contact with any other person.
Hvivo's plans still need to be approved by the UK's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency before any testing can begin.
If you're interested in participating, visit Hvivo's website at FluCamp.com.
Researchers in Seattle have also begun recruiting healthy volunteers to participate in a clinical trial for a vaccine developed by the biotechnology company Moderna Therapeutics, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The vaccine trial is expected to launch by the end of April and will take 14 months but volunteers don't need to be quarantined. They will receive up to $1,100 in total.
Health experts have warned that a vaccine is unlikely to be approved in time to halt the current coronavirus outbreak.
