Novelist urges volunteers to be infected with coronavirus

Salley Vickers, 70, says those with immunity could 'lend a hand' and suggests idea could appeal to Dominic Cummings

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Fit and healthy volunteers should be deliberately infected with Covid-19 so they can help fight the pandemic after their recovery, the novelist and NHS psychotherapist Salley Vickers has proposed.

Vickers, 70, suggested that a "controlled policy" of exposing volunteers to the virus under strict conditions might appeal to the "famously off-the-wall thinking" of Boris Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.