- Researchers say a nasal spray vaccine against COVID-19 might be the most effective way to fight the novel coronavirus.
- That’s because the virus usually enters the human body in the nasal passage, and a spray would attack the invader there.
- Right now, 7 of the 100 COVID-19 vaccines in clinical trials are nasal sprays.
SARS-CoV-2 is a respiratory virus, which means its favorite place to enter the body is through the nose. That’s why testing for the novel coronavirus involves nasal swabs.
If that’s the case, though, why do we vaccinate people against COVID-19, the disease caused by an infection with the coronavirus, with a shot in the arm and not a nasal spray?
Indeed, nasal sprays can be used to vaccinate against COVID-19, and several such vaccines are now being developed.
“One of the big selling points would be that intranasal vaccines are needle-free, and there is a big population of people who are freaked out by getting a needle stick,” Dr. Troy Randall, an inflammation, immunology, and immunotherapeutics researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told Healthline.
“Given that [the novel coronavirus] is a respiratory virus, having an antibody response in the nose is probably a better model,” he added.
Randall co-authored an article that was published today in Science magazine with fellow researcher Frances Lund on the potential benefits of an intranasal COVID-19 vaccine.
Source: healthline