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The world's first human challenge trial in which volunteers were deliberately exposed to Covid-19 to advance research into the disease was found to be safe in healthy young adults, one of the companies running the study said on Wednesday. The data supports the safety of this model which could theoretically provide a "plug and play" platform for testing therapies and vaccines using the original Covid-19 strain as well as variants of the virus, Open Orphan, which carried out the study, said in a statement. Open Orphan is running the project, launched a year ago, with Imperial College London, the UK government's vaccines task force and the clinical company  hVIVO. The trial infected 36 healthy male and female volunteers aged 18-29 years with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain of the virus and closely monitored them in a controlled quarantined setting. They will be followed up for 12 months after discharge from the quarantine facility.

Provision of free lateral flow tests could end in the UK, and prime minister Boris Johnson is expected to make the big announcement within weeks, The Sunday Times has reported. The report said that in future free test kits could be provided only in high-risk settings such as care homes, hospitals and schools, and to people with symptoms, and contact tracing by NHS Test and Trace is also expected to be scaled back. The newspaper quoted a senior Whitehall source as saying: "I don't think we are in a world where we can continue to hand out free lateral flow tests to everybody. "It's likely we will move to a scenario where there is less testing, but we have a capacity to ramp it up if necessary." It added that more than £6 billion of public money has already been spent on mass testing. Separately, Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the country's vaccine task force said that Covid-19 should now be treated as a flu, and mass vaccination campaigns should end after the booster shots in the UK.

The Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Taskforce head Madelaine McTernan has returned to working full time as the director general of the Vaccine Taskforce for autumn booster campaign preparation. She has presented a few key recommendations to help ensure continued HRT supply to meet rising demand. "Improved access to data on prescriptions to more easily see where there are shortfalls between HRT packs prescribed and HRT packs supplied by manufacturers," she suggested. "Taking lessons from the HRT supply chain work to inform broader medicine supply work." Madelaine said: "I am pleased to see the situation with HRT supply is improving across the country. I want to thank suppliers and manufacturers for their engagement and positive action to tackle this serious issue.