US eyes controversial human challenge trials for COVID-19 vaccine

US government scientists have begun efforts to manufacture a strain of the novel coronavirus that could be used in human challenge trials of vaccines, a controversial type of study in which healthy volunteers would be vaccinated and then intentionally infected with the virus,  according to the Reuters news agency.
The work is preliminary and such trials would not replace large-scale, phase-three trials such as those now under way in the United States testing experimental COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc, according to a statement emailed to Reuters by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
US officials organising the fight against the pandemic have been under pressure from advocacy groups such as 1 Day Sooner and others that see challenge trials as a way to speed up tests of a COVID-19 vaccine. Most vaccine trials rely on inadvertent infection, which can take time to occur.
Some drugmakers, including AstraZeneca and
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