Brave Britons volunteer to be infected with respiratory disease to help create vaccine

The quarantine unit in East London has doctors monitoring people infected with a respiratory virus. The paid volunteers are given the virus by choice and have vaccines and drugs tested on them. It is known as a controlled human infection model.

Volunteers are paid on average £3,000 and will have to stay in a room for two weeks.

Volunteers will not be infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus.

They are infected with a much weaker strain of human coronavirus that will provide milder symptoms. 

Dr Andrew Catchpole a scientist involved in the trial told BBC News: "We take healthy volunteers and we inoculate them with a version of the human coronavirus, follow their disease time course and then return them to health."

READ MORE: BBC expert breaks down terrifying scale of coronavirus crisis

At the time of writing Britain has the 10th highest amount of COVID-19 cases in the world. 

The UK has just less than 5,900 cases in total.

The death toll in Britain is currently 289. 

A total of 135 people have recovered from the coronavirus within the United Kingdom.

There are currently more than 5,400 active COVID-19 cases within Britain. 

Worldwide there have been more than 358,000 COVID-19 cases. 

The death toll has reached more than 15,000 at the time of writing. 

More than 100,000 people have recovered from the virus across the globe. 

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There are currently more than 242,000 active cases of COVID-19.

Of those just less than 12,000 are in a serious or critical condition. 

Europe is the epicentre of the virus despite the COVID-19 outbreak beginning in China.

A total of 193 countries have a confirmed coronavirus case.