China has become the first country to approve an inhaled Covid-19 vaccine, paving the way for the potential use of the needle–free product, as reported by news network CNN.
The vaccine maker, CanSino Biologics, said in a statement Sunday, 4 September, that China’s medicines regulator had approved the inhaled dose for emergency use as a booster vaccine.
The product, known as Convidecia Air, delivers a vaccine dose through a puff of air from a nebulizer that is then inhaled by mouth. CanSino’s injected Convidecia Covid-19 vaccine is already in use in China and has been approved in a handful of other countries.
According to a database maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), CanSino’s new product is one of two specifically «inhaled» vaccines that had reached clinical phase development.
Many pharma companies worldwide research innovative ways to deliver Covid-19 protection via the nose and mouth.
CanSino’s Convidecia vaccine is similar to the Johnson & Johnson and Oxford AstraZeneca vaccines. It uses a harmless virus called an adenovirus to ferry instructions for making Covid’s spike proteins into cells so the body can create antibodies against them.
The country continues to adhere to a stringent zero–Covid policy, even as the rest of the world learns to live with the virus.
More than 70 Chinese cities have been placed under full or partial Covid lockdown since late August, impacting more than 300 million people, according to a CNN tally.