A burst of applications for a vaccine still under development.
In less than ten days, 25,000 people of all ages have volunteered to test potential vaccines against Covid-19, said Tuesday the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).
Recruitment continues, underline the project managers, who launched the call to participate on October 1.
A call of such magnitude, with the creation of a dedicated platform (called “Covireivac”), is unprecedented in France.
"We will, however, continue to mobilize volunteers who so wish in order to be able to recruit target people for future trials," said Odile Launay, infectious disease specialist at Cochin Hospital (AP-HP) in Paris and coordinator of Covireivac, cited in a press release from Inserm.
Two types of clinical trials
Volunteers, who must be of legal age, are invited to complete a health questionnaire on the site www.covireivac.fr, which will then allow researchers to select them according to the needs of the planned trials.
Each volunteer contacted can then confirm their agreement to participate in the trial for which they have been called, or choose to give it up.
It is also possible that it will never be called.
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The large-scale clinical trials envisaged in France are of two types, recalls Inserm.
Phase 2 trials aim to closely study the ability of vaccines to produce an immune response (immunogenicity) in elderly people, whose immune systems are generally weakened and who are most at risk of developing severe forms of the disease.
Phase 3 trials, which study the large-scale efficacy and safety of promising vaccine candidates, are also planned.
In the most affected regions
These clinical trials could start by the end of the year, depending on the evolution of the epidemic in France and ongoing discussions with the manufacturers in charge of vaccine development, adds the institute.
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Phase 3 trials are already underway abroad, but none in France where the circulation of the virus was not sufficient so far.
To assess the effectiveness, "the regions chosen will be those where the virus circulates the most," explained Professor Launay when the call for volunteers was launched.
She then specified that people who have already developed antibodies against the new coronavirus were not excluded from the tests.