The Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, has disclosed the world can expect the introduction of improved vaccines in the form of Nasal Sprays and Oral drugs in the coming months, as part of efforts to eradicate covid 19.
This was made known in an online Q&A session on COVID-19 Boosters and Latest Science Developments attended by MedHealth.Info. Disclosing the latest development, Dr. Soumya stated that “… hopefully we would have improved vaccines, there’s a lot of work going on now, both on nasal vaccines…there are about 14 nasal vaccines that are under trial in many different parts of the world…several of them…at least four or five of them are in late-stage trials, including one in the solidarity vaccine trial of the WHO. So hopefully, in the next few months, we’ll get to understand how these nasal sprays or oral vaccines are working, and whether they will be a better booster because we hope that with local immunity in the respiratory tract you can actually also prevent infections, not just prevent severe diseases which the current vaccines are doing but also prevent infections more effectively. So, that’s still to come in the future. It may also help people who don’t like to take injections if you could have a spray that you can take in your nose. So, there are many innovations happening.”
Already, nature report that China and India have approved the wide-scale use of these nasal vaccines. Answering a question on vaccination and the World Health Organization’s current recommendations as the northern hemisphere approaches winter, the WHO’s first chief scientist strongly advised that “…we also know that the third dose or the booster is very important because that’s what gives us long-lasting protection…some studies are showing that once you have the third dose then your protection can last up to a year or so. So it’s really important and the WHO thus recommends that all adults who’ve had the primary course must get the third dose or the booster about four to six months after the last dose particularly if they belong to the high-risk group.”
The good news she confirms is that no new sub-variant of the omicron variant has proven to be worse than the current variants.
