Less than two months after President Donald Trump declared the spread of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 a national emergency on March 13, 2020, I called for human challenge trials to quickly vet the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. The Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed initiative was shortly thereafter announced; it aimed to "accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics."
Human challenge trials in which candidate vaccines and placebos are administered to consenting volunteers would certainly have cranked up the warp speed for COVID-19 vaccine deployment. Once vaccinated, the volunteers would be exposed to the COVID-19 virus to test the effectiveness of the vaccines in comparison to placebos for preventing and/or ameliorating infections. Such testing would have made it possible for vaccines to be deployed months before Pfizer's mRNA vaccine was finally given an emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 11, 2020.
