In addition to vaccination, countries continue to conduct research on oral or inhaled COVID-19 vaccines, and China recently released the latest results of its research on aerosol inhalation vaccine. Will it be possible for people to get immunity through inhalation in the future?
For now, countries have focused on mass injection vaccines to control the COVID-19 epidemic, but research on other non-injection vaccines, such as inhaled or oral vaccines, is also ongoing. China’s clinical trial of a vaccine for inhaling COVID-19 has been approved by authorities, with Chinese media reporting that the vaccine is safe.
The nebulized inhaler allows vaccinators to breathe the vaccine into the respiratory tract and lungs without the need for “injections”, thus obtaining “triple protection” of mucosal immunity, cellular immunity, and humoral immunity.
The response prompted by an inhaled vaccine “is much more potent because it recruits cells that essentially live in the lung waiting for exposure to a pathogen, in this case to SARS-CoV-2. Inhaled vaccines also have a better chance to promote immunity in the deepest parts of the lungs, where COVID-19 can wreak the most damage. There’s another benefit to that effectiveness, besides personal protection — you don’t have to use as much vaccine to get the same response. By focusing that immune response in the lungs, we can use a lot less vaccine and it still goes a lot further. Inhaled vaccines also would be “greatly advantageous” in promoting COVID-19 vaccination around the world. They free vaccines from needles and syringes, which can be difficult to obtain in certain resource-poor settings, as well as opening up vaccination to needle-phobic individuals.