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By Casey Hall
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – In what is believed to be a world first, China’s advertising capital, Shanghai, this week unveiled a new type of COVID-19 vaccine that is inhaled and not given by injection.
Chinese regulators approved the vaccine, produced through Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino Biologics, for use as a booster in September.
And now early people are starting to get the vaccine, which is inhaled by mouth from a container that looks like a cup of coffee to take away with a short mouthpiece.
“Our body’s first line of defense is the mucous membrane of our respiratory system, we need immunity to be directly stimulated and the use of the inhaled vaccine does,” said Dr. Zhao Hui, lead physician at Shanghai United Family Hospital Pudong. Reuters.
His hospital is among those administering the new vaccine, which will be used in addition to normal injections.
Commenting on what he said about the early use of the technology, Erwin Loh, chief medical officer of St Vincents Health Australia, said the advent of inhaled vaccines is vital not only because of their potential to protect against infection, but also because they can reduce vaccine hesitancy.
“There are a large proportion of other people who are resistant to the vaccine because they have needle phobia. They probably wouldn’t express it, but that’s what they think,” he said.
Increased vaccination is important for China, which remains a global exception as it sticks to its “zero COVID” policy, which aims to get rid of communal outbreaks of the virus.
Shanghai, which reported no new cases of symptomatic coronavirus transmitted nationwide by Oct. 27 and 11 local asymptomatic cases, still has targeted lockdowns affecting residential buildings and businesses in the city.
The Shanghai government’s WeChat account, announcing the launch of the inhalable vaccine this week, said 23 million of the city’s 26 million citizens had been fully vaccinated against COVID, and more than 12 million had gained boosters.
According to the official knowledge of the Chinese government, more than 90% of its population has been vaccinated. The country has relied on inactivated vaccines produced and has not yet imported or brought its own edition of an mRNA vaccine. The unworthy vaccine is an aerosol. edition of an inactivated vaccine.
Loh hopes the effects of Shanghai’s foray into inhaled vaccines will inspire other countries to do the same.
“Inhaled vaccines opposed to respiratory diseases like COVID-19 will be the future,” he said.
(Reporting via Casey Hall; Editing by Alison Williams)