The UK is to become the first country in the world to run a study which will see 90 healthy adult volunteers deliberately infected with Covid-19.

Backed by a £33.6m UK government grant, the Human Challenge study will involve establishing the smallest amount of virus needed to cause infection, which will give doctors greater understanding of Covid-19 and help support the pandemic response by aiding vaccine and treatment development.

Due to begin in the next few weeks, it will involve the volunteers being exposed to the virus in a safe and controlled environment. It will use the version of the virus that has been circulating in the UK since March last year, which has been shown to be of low risk in young health adults.

Medics and scientists will closely monitor the effect of the virus on volunteers and will be on hand to look after them 24 hours a day.

The researchers are also working very closely with the Royal Free Hospital and the North Central London (NCL) Adult Critical Care Network to ensure the study will not impact on the NHS’s ability to care for patients during the pandemic. The study will not begin without their go-ahead.

Once the initial study has taken place, vaccine candidates, which have proven to be safe in clinical trials, could be given to small numbers of volunteers who are then exposed to the Covid-19 virus, helping to identify the most effective vaccines and accelerate their development.

Researchers are encouraging people aged between 18 and 30, who are at the lowest risk of complications resulting from coronavirus, to volunteer.

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “These human challenge studies will take place here in the UK and will help accelerate scientists’ knowledge of how coronavirus affects people and could eventually further the rapid development of vaccines.”

Over many decades, such studies have been performed safely and have played important roles in accelerating the development of treatments for diseases including malaria, typhoid, cholera, norovirus and flu. The trials have also helped researchers establish which possible vaccine is most likely to succeed in phase 3 clinical trials that would follow, usually involving thousands of volunteers.

This initial study will also help doctors understand how the immune system reacts to coronavirus and identify factors that influence how the virus is transmitted, including how a person who is infected with Covid-19 virus transmits infectious virus particles into the environment.

The Human Challenge study is being delivered by the government’s Vaccines Taskforce, Imperial College London, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and the industry-leading clinical company hVIVO, which has pioneered viral human challenge models.

The Royal Free’s specialist and secure clinical research facilities in London are specifically designed to contain the virus. Highly trained medics and scientists will be on hand to carefully examine how the virus behaves in the body and to ensure the safety of volunteers.

The virus being used in the characterisation study has been produced by a team at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust in London, in collaboration with hVIVO with support from virologists at Imperial College London.