In what is believed to be a world first, China’s commercial capital Shanghai this week unveiled a new type of Covid-19 vaccine that is inhaled rather than given by injection.
Chinese regulators approved the vaccine, produced by Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino Biologics, for use as a booster in September.
The first people are starting to get the vaccine, which is inhaled through the mouth of a container that looks like a coffee cup with a short mouthpiece.
“Our body’s first line of defense is the mucous membrane of our respiratory system, we want it to be stimulated directly to improve immunity and using the inhaled vaccine does that,” said Zhao Hui, medical director of Shanghai United Family Hospital Pudong, to Reuters.
The hospital is among those administering the new vaccine, which will be used in addition to regular injections.
Commenting on what he said was the technology’s first use, Erwin Loh, medical director at St Vincents Health Australia, said the advent of inhaled vaccines was important not only because of their potential to protect against infections, but also because they could decrease vaccine hesitancy.
“There is a large proportion of people who are resistant to getting the vaccine because they have a phobia of needles. They may not articulate it, but that’s what they think,” he said.
Increasing vaccine adoption is vital for China, which remains a global exception as it maintains its “Covid Zero” policy aimed at eliminating community outbreaks of the virus.
Shanghai, which reported no new symptomatic domestically transmitted coronavirus cases on October 27 and 11 local asymptomatic cases, is still subject to targeted lockdowns affecting residential buildings and businesses in the city.
The Shanghai government’s WeChat account, in announcing the launch of the inhaled vaccine this week, said that 23 million of the city’s 26 million residents have been fully vaccinated against Covid and more than 12 million have received booster shots.
According to official data from the Chinese government, more than 90% of its population has been vaccinated. The country has inactivated vaccines produced in the country and has not yet imported or introduced its own version of an mRNA vaccine.
The inhaled vaccine is an aerosolized version of an inactive injection.
Loh hopes the results of Shanghai’s foray into inhalation vaccines will encourage other countries to follow suit.
“I think inhaled vaccines for respiratory diseases like Covid-19 will be the future,” he said.
Source: CNN Brasil
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