Young scientist from Australia volunteers to get infected with COVID-19 for research purpose

A brave young Australian scientist has offered to become infected with COVID-19 to help researchers find a vaccine for the deadly virus.

Sophie Rose, from Brisbane, said she is willing to face the small risk of dying if it means finding a cure that could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives.

The 22-year-old co-founded 1DaySooner - a campaign pushing for human challenge trials for coronavirus vaccines. A human challenge trial involves volunteers receiving a vaccine and then being administered with a dose of live coronavirus.

The trials are monitored under strict laboratory conditions to keep the volunteers safe. Ms Rose, a Stanford University graduate originally from Brisbane, said she was prepared to put her body on the line if it means there's a possibility of finding a cure.

'I was thinking about this the other day and thinking that I would donate a kidney for my best friend and that's benefiting the one person whereas the results from these trials have the potential to benefit hundreds of thousands of people if not more and that seems worth it to me,' she told News Corp.

'When I look at everything that's going on in the world at the moment, we have economic destruction across multiple different countries, we have hundreds of thousands of people dying, other people are sick, none of this is to mention the consistent toll of people's emotional well being whilst they're working from home.

Any contribution that we can make that is of a reasonable risk to help people is what we should be doing.'Ms Rose moved to the U.S. in 2014 and studied a bachelor's degree in biology at California's elite Stanford University.She was working as a clinical cancer researcher at England's Oxford University when the pandemic hit, before quitting in May to start 1DaySooner with Hawvard Law School graduate Josh Morrison.