Inhaled COVID Vaccines Approved in India and China
Regulatory agencies in India and China have approved two different spray vaccines for COVID-19 that are inhaled through the nose or mouth rather than injected into the body.1 Referred to as “mucosal” vaccines, the Chinese company CanSinoBIO and the Indian company Bharat Biotech hope the new COVID vaccines will provide “sterilizing immunity” and prevent infection and block transmission of the SARS-CoV-2, which the injectable mRNA vaccines have failed to do.2
Researchers say that inhalable vaccines are more easily administered because disposable devices with minimal storage requirements are used for mass vaccination campaigns in comparison to vaccines injected with a syringe, which usually require low-temperature storage and trained medical professionals to administer them.3
CanSinoBIO’s Convidecia Air
CanSinoBIO of Tianjin, China announced that the National Medical Products Administration of China has approved its aerosol spray inhaled COVID vaccine, Convidecia Air, for use as a booster shot.4
CanSinoBIO said that results from preliminary clinical trials shows that the human adenovirus vectored non-replicating inhaled vaccine, which is an aerosolized version of its intramuscular vaccine, improves immune protection after one puff; however, the effectiveness of the inhaled vaccine has not yet been determined.5
CanSinoBIO’s chief scientific officer and executive director, Tao Zhu, said that inhalable COVID vaccine emulates the way the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters the human body. When the vaccine is aerosolized into tiny particles, it is inhaled into the respiratory tract and lungs using a nebulizer to trigger an immune response in the mucous membranes in the respiratory tract.6
A spokesperson from CanSinoBIO said:
The approval will have a positive impact on the company’s performance if the vaccine is subsequently purchased and used by relevant government agencies.7
Bharat Biotech’s iNCOVACC
Bharat Biotech of Hyderabad, India announced that the company’s nasal COVID vaccine known as iNCOVACC has been approved in in India for “restricted use in emergency situations,” as a booster dose for people who have already had two doses of intramuscular COVID vaccines.8 The Bharat Biotech vaccine is produced by using a chimpanzee cold virus to deliver a copy of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into the lining of the nose, which is supposed to fool the body into reacting as if it is encountering the whole coronavirus.
India’s nasal COVID vaccine was developed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, which was then licensed to Bharat Biotech. The company conducted two clinical trials, administering two doses of the vaccine to 3,100 previously unvaccinated volunteers and as a booster to around 875 volunteers who had received two shots of other COVID vaccines.9
Questions still remain on how much protection these inhaled vaccines might offer and whether the level of protection they provide will depend on which injected vaccine a person initially was given.10
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