November 17, 2023 | CBC News
“I sneezed two times in succession, and I was kind of like — oh no — is it starting?”
That isolation and anxiety might feel overly familiar, but Mullin isn’t talking about catching COVID-19 or enduring a lockdown in early 2020.
Instead, after years of restrictions and rapid tests and far too many Zoom calls, Mullin and Crisanto both signed up for several weeks alone in separate hospital rooms, all for the sake of science.
The friends are among dozens of Canadians participating in a human challenge trial — a type of medical study that involves purposely infecting people with a particular pathogen. In this case, it’s the bacteria Bordetella pertussis, known for causing potentially deadly whooping cough.