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British volunteers are to be deliberately infected with COVID-19 to test whether a vaccine offers any protection.
In the first trial of its kind, participants will be injected with an experimental vaccine and around a month later exposed to Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes the disease.

According to FT, the studies – which are known as human challenge trials – will begin in January and are government funded.

Image: Around 2,000 people are thought to have volunteered
It is reported that the trials will take place in a secure facility in Whitechapel, east London, and that 2,000 potential volunteers have signed up in the UK.
A government spokesperson said it is looking into collaborating on the potential development of a vaccine through human challenge studies.

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“These discussions are part of our work to research ways of treating, limiting and hopefully preventing the virus so we can end the pandemic sooner,” they added.

Any trial that involves exposing people to the virus would need the approval of the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), as well as an independent research committee.

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Challenge trials are controversial.
Even young people have a very small risk of serious disease from the virus and some doctors believe that goes against medical ethics.
There is also the risk they could suffer from “long COVID” symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome.

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But with levels of the virus spreading in the population still relatively low, the trials are the fastest way of testing the level of protection from a vaccine.
Scientists need to know whether the vaccines being developed stop people getting the virus, or whether they just take the edge off symptoms.
Dr Claire Waddington, clinical lecturer in infectious diseases at the University of Cambridge, said challenge trials are “well established as a way to accelerate the development of vaccines”.
She pointed to similar trials being used for typhoid vaccines, which are now being rolled out in affected countries.

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“As we gain more understanding of COVID-19, we are increasingly in a position to identify those people for who COVID-19 infection is a mild illness, and these people could safely participate in a controlled human infection study after a thorough medical assessment and consent process,” she said.
“Such a model could give us some extremely useful information on how the immune system responds to COVID and what responses are protective, as well as providing a model for early testing of candidate vaccines.”
The MHRA said: “The safety of trial participants is our top priority and any proposal from a developer to include a human infection challenge as part of a clinical trial for development of a vaccine would be considered on a benefit-risk basis, with risks monitored for and minimised in the proposed trial design.”

The government will finally release a mobile phone app on Thursday that people in England and Wales can use to establish whether they may have been exposed to coronavirus.
The launch follows the ignominious scrapping of the previous app despite months of development, although some features are being incorporated into the new design.

It comes after the NHS and government seem to have recognised that to get a working app on to Britons’ smartphones they needed to work with, rather than against, the companies which provide the technology powering them.

Image: A previous app was scrapped after it ran into technical issues
What’s different this time?
The new app will use a COVID-19 exposure notification system which Apple and Google have built in to the new versions of their mobile operating systems, iOS and Android.

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Privacy has been a big focus for both companies, and even before downloading the new app users will need to turn on the exposure notifications feature, but can turn it off at any time.

If it is on, instead of sending data to a public health authority, the phone will use Bluetooth to retain on the device a collection of protected IDs remembering all of the other phones it has been near.

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The team developing the app across government and NHSX – the health service’s digital unit – have built an algorithm which they say is able to establish how great the risk is that someone has caught the virus, based on Bluetooth signals.
Not everyone who passes each other by will be considered a potential contact. Instead, their contact score will be given a weighting based on the distance between the phones and the duration they were close together.

Exposure notifications are alerts people will receive when someone they have been close to for a significant amount of time – perhaps within two metres on a long bus journey – tests positive for coronavirus.
If, after receiving an alert, a user gets tested and finds out they too are positive for COVID-19, they can voluntarily send an alert to the protected IDs stored on the device.
If these contacts recorded by the phone meet the bar set by the NHS algorithm, then the app will instruct them to self-isolate too.
This kind of functionality was planned for the previous app – but because the government had not complied with Apple and Google’s requirement to keep this data on the devices themselves, it struggled to record potential exposures.
One of the other new features is a QR code system. Businesses including pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and cinemas are being urged to ensure they have NHS QR code posters visible for customers to scan using the app and check-in.
The QR codes are designed to help businesses automate the new legal requirement to record customers’ contact details, along with details for staff and other visitors to the premises.
The businesses themselves will continue to take customers’ details just as they have done throughout the pandemic, but the app itself will help the user keep a record of where they’ve been.
In this way the app will assist traditional manual contract-tracers while also allowing users to check any symptoms and see if they need to self-isolate.

Image: The app will anonymously track who people have come into contact with
The app will have problems gaining people’s trustAnalysis by Rowland Manthorpe, technology correspondent
For its second attempt at a contact tracing app, the UK government has introduced several new elements – but the essential problems it faced the first time round still haven’t gone away.
Perhaps the most notable new element is the contact-tracing technology. Whereas the first app was built in-house, this time it uses the toolkit provided by Google and Apple.
This has been deployed in many other countries, including Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.
Results on its effectiveness are still few and far between, but there are no complaints about its privacy protections, so at least on that front people should feel safe using it.
The app also has some new features, in particular a QR code scanner for checking into venues.
The government has changed the law in England to make it illegal for certain premises not to display a QR code and collect people’s details, so this is going to become a big part of everyday life.
And this is where the problems come in: not technical ones, but trust and transparency.
Anecdotally, there are still real issues of trust about this app; yet as the government hasn’t released any data from its pilots, it’s impossible to know whether these have been overcome.
Crucial elements of the app’s functionality, such as the decision whether or not to share your test results with contacts, are entirely voluntary. Gaining trust for them is going to be vital if this tool is going to work.

The British government is launching a new telecoms diversity task force to find a supplier capable of filling the void left by a ban on Huawei’s equipment within the UK’s 5G infrastructure.
Mobile networks in the UK will be banned from purchasing 5G kit from Huawei from the end of this year, leaving only two large-scale suppliers active in the British market: Ericsson and Nokia.

Although the ban took place on security grounds, according to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) the dependence on just two suppliers also introduces a significant risk for the long-term security of UK networks.

Huawei: The company and the security risks explained

The security provided by a more diverse marketplace was the main reason NCSC gave for initially assessing that Britain’s 5G networks were safer for including Huawei equipment as well as that manufactured by Ericsson and Nokia.
However, following a decision by the White House to ban American companies from providing computer chips to Huawei – potentially pushing it to adopt chips produced by less trusted manufacturers – the NCSC was forced to upgrade the risk posed by Huawei equipment.

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The US sanctions were criticised as “arbitrary and pernicious” by Huawei, which has confirmed that 40% of the roles within its enterprise business group in the UK are being made redundant as a result.

On Wednesday the government said it planned to publish a telecoms diversification strategy later this year “to address a market failure where mobile companies are limited to using just three major suppliers in their telecoms networks”.

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“This restricts choice and poses a risk for the security and resilience of the UK’s future digital networks,” the statement added.
It comes ahead of the government introducing a Telecoms Security Bill this autumn, around the same time as which the government will also be publishing its telecoms diversity strategy.
The bill will make the prohibition on purchasing new Huawei equipment from the end of this year, and the requirement to remove all existing Huawei equipment from 5G networks by 2027, a legal obligation.

‘We convinced many countries not to use Huawei’

A task force to develop and implement the strategy will be led by Lord Livingston of Parkhead, a Conservative peer and the former chief executive of BT Group, who will be joined by senior executives within the telecoms sector to ensure that the government is listening to the industry’s needs.
Lord Livingston said: “It is vital that we position ourselves for the next generation of technology, particularly 5G, by having a wide choice of secure, innovative and high quality suppliers.
“I look forward to chairing this team of experts from industry and academia who can provide advice to government as to how it can best achieve these aims,” Lord Livingston added.
Although the digital secretary Oliver Dowden described the task force’s role as to “break through the barriers stopping suppliers from entering the UK,” there are currently no obvious third companies who could replace Huawei.
NCSC already requires that mobile operators use at least two vendors to provide the radio antennas in their network, meaning from the end of this year the UK mobile companies will effectively be required to purchase Nokia and Ericsson equipment.
Part of the task force’s work will be to enable other companies who provide Radio Access Network (RAN) equipment, such as Samsung, to be interoperable with the core equipment used in the core of the 5G infrastructure.
Speaking to Sky News, Matt Warman MP, who has the infrastructure portfolio under the Digital Secretary, said he did not expect that the key cause of the UK’s change in approach – the US decision to restrict Huawei’s computer chips – would be reversed.
“The most important thing to say is that we’ve taken the right decision for this country,” Mr Warman said.
“If I look across the Atlantic, actually this is an issue where – while the language might be different – there is considerable bipartisan support that is in line with the decision we’re taking,” he added.

An asteroid the size of a bus is set to pass Earth at a distance closer than both the Moon and satellites, according to NASA.
The asteroid, named 2020 SW, will fly past 13,000 miles (22,000 kilometres) above the Earth’s surface.

This distance means it will be closer than both the Moon and satellites – used for GPS, television and weather – that orbit our plan.

Image: After passing, the asteroid will continue its orbit around the sun
The rock was only discovered on 18 September by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.
It is estimated to be around five to 10 metres (15 to 30ft) wide, making it equivalent to the “size of a small school bus”.

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Further observations carried out by astronomers identified a trajectory which ruled out any chance of the asteroid colliding with Earth.

“Although it’s not on an impact trajectory with Earth, if it were, the space rock would almost certainly break up high in the atmosphere, becoming a bright meteor known as a fireball,” the space agency said.

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After the asteroid passes at noon, UK time, it will continue its journey around the sun.
This means it will not pass Earth again until 2041, where it will be a greater distance away from the planet.
Although the minor planet’s passing will not be visible to the naked eye, people with 12-inch telescopes should be able to spot it.
The passing will also be streamed in a live video feed broadcast by the Virtual Telescope Project.
Paul Chodas, a director at NASA’s Jet Propulsions Laboratory, said: “There are a large number of tiny asteroids like this one, and several of them approach our planet as close as this several times every year.
“In fact, asteroids of this size impact our atmosphere at an average rate of about once every year or two.”
There are believed to be more than 100 million small asteroids, similar to 2020 SW. However, they are hard to discover until they get very close to Earth.
Larger asteroids, which hold a greater threat if they did collide with Earth, can be detected while further away because they are brighter than small ones.
On 20 August, an asteroid made the closest fly-by of Earth ever recorded. At the time, NASA admitted it had not seen it until after it passed.

Tesla’s share value dropped by $50bn (£39bn) last night as investors reacted to speeches by Elon Musk and other company executives at the company’s battery day event.
The astronomical figure – in the range of the UK’s annual spending on defence (£38bn) – is more a mark of how much the company has grown over the past year than it is the billionaire chief executive’s celebrity status.

Last September, all of Tesla’s shares were worth around $39bn, but even after last night’s drop the company remains valued at around $390bn – a 1,000% increase in 12 months.

Image: Tesla’a shares have increased by roughly 1,000% in a year
Tesla overtook Toyota to become the world’s most valuable car company earlier this year, despite the Japanese company manufacturing and producing more vehicles.
Its shares closed 5.6% lower and fell another 6.9% in after hours trading on Tuesday as investors, who expected the company to announce a significant milestone in reducing the price of an electric vehicle, were left disappointed.

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Musk and Tesla’s other executives instead gave presentations on the company’s new battery technologies and manufacturing strategies, but their outlook was cautious – explaining that the new developments wouldn’t be ready for a number of years.

“In three years… we can do a $25,000 car that will be basically on par [with], maybe slight better than a comparable gasoline car,” Musk told an online audience of more than 270,000.

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Manufacturing an affordable electric car “has always been our dream from the beginning of the company,” Musk added – but the only new vehicle announced was far outside of this range.
Deliveries of the new Model S Plaid, a 520-mile sedan with a top speed of 200 miles per hour (320km), will start in 2021 and is listed on Tesla’s website for nearly $140,000 (£117,00).
Even further into the future – about three years away – Musk said the company was developing a new generation of batteries which will be more powerful, longer lasting and half the price of the ones it currently produces.
Battery development is the key focus for investors, but the company failed to excite everyone.
“Nothing Musk discussed about batteries is a done deal. There was nothing tangible,” Roth Capital Partners analyst Craig Irwin told Reuters.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to carry out an “avoidance manoeuvre” to prevent it from being hit by space junk, NASA has said.
Its trajectory was changed to move it further away from the “unknown piece of space debris”, the US space agency wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

The three crew members – two Russians and an American – relocated to their Soyuz spacecraft attached to the ISS during the operation, so they could evacuate if necessary.

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Experts expected the space junk to pass within “several kilometres” of the ISS, but decided to move it “out of an abundance of caution”.
Russian and US flight controllers worked together to adjust the station’s orbit in an operation which took minutes.

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The crew were able to continue with their regular activities after the manoeuvre was complete.

NASA said the crew were not in danger at any time.

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“Maneuver Burn complete. The astronauts are coming out of safe haven,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Twitter.

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It is the third time this year the International Space Station (ISS) has had to manoeuvre to avoid space debris, he said.
He tweeted: “In the last 2 weeks, there have been 3 high concern potential conjunctions. Debris is getting worse!”
Astronomer Jonathon McDowell, at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted the unknown object was a part of a 2018 Japanese rocket which broke into 77 pieces last year.
The ISS is orbiting around 260 miles (420km) above the Earth, travelling at a speed of about 17,130mph (27,568km/h).
At this velocity, even a small object has the ability to cause serious damage to the space station.
NASA has said these kinds of manoeuvres occur on a regular basis, with 25 having occurred between 1999 and 2018.