Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated rapid research to aid in the understanding of the disease and the development of novel therapeutics. One option is to conduct controlled human infection trials (CHITs). In this article I examine the history of deliberate human infection and CHITs and their utilization prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, key ethical considerations of CHITs in the COVID-19 setting, an analysis of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Key criteria for the ethical acceptability of COVID-19 human challenge studies, and a review of the two COVID-19 CHITs that have already commenced, their compliance with the WHO criteria and other ethical considerations.