Singapore’s first Covid-19 human challenge trial under way

SINGAPORE: Singapore is one of the very few places in the world holding human challenge studies on the Covid-19 virus, which brought the world to a virtual standstill in 2020.

The first of these studies, wherein volunteers are intentionally exposed to the Covid-19 virus, was conducted in the United Kingdom in 2021.  There were 36 healthy and unvaccinated young adults inoculated with the original strain of the virus, and the study raised no serious safety concerns.

In March 2024, funding for a five-year programme called Mucosal Immunity in Human Coronavirus Challenge (MusiCC) led by Imperial College London was announced for human challenge studies for transmission-blocking COVID-19 vaccines. It involved human challenge trials set to take place in the UK, Europe, Singapore, and the United States. These studies were, in large part, aimed at finding vaccines for new pandemic diseases within 100 days.

Singapore started recruiting volunteers for the programme shortly afterwards. A Straits Times report says that five young volunteers were exposed to the virus in the first human challenge study in the city-state.

The study, Sing-CoV, is being conducted at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID). ST reported that its goal is to study 20 vaccinated and healthy people from the ages of 21 to 30. Their health will be monitored multiple times over the course of a year.

The selected volunteers are required to be admitted for as long as two weeks, with a healthcare team assigned to make sure they stay well. The principal investigator for Sing-CoV, Associate Professor Barnaby Young, told ST that there is a very small chance of the volunteers contracting a severe infection, though the healthcare team is ready to administer the needed treatment should this occur.

Among the five initial volunteers, two developed only mild symptoms. They recovered quickly and needed no medication. One of the volunteers, a 24-year-old Nanyang Technological University mechanical engineering student named Goh Zhi Hao, said that the sore eyes and mild fatigue he experienced lasted two to three days. He characterised the experience as “better” than expected, ST reported.

The report also said that the volunteers are given a reimbursement of S$300 a day for the time they spend in the study, amounting to over S$6,000 for each. In the UK, participants were given up to £4500 (S$7760) each.

Commenting on the study,  the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the US Food and Drug Administration said:

“Establishing the capability to perform SARS-CoV-2 human challenge studies in Singapore will be highly significant. Firstly, this will facilitate development of therapeutics and vaccines in the region; secondly, it will ensure inferences drawn from SARS-CoV-2 human challenge studies are applicable to people of Asian ethnicity; and thirdly, it will support capacity development in the region where future coronavirus pandemics (like SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2) are expected to originate.”  /TISG

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