The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said Tuesday she was looking forward to the
“second generation” of Covid-19 vaccines, which could include nasal sprays and oral
versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soumya Swaminathan said such vaccines could have advantages over the current crop as
they would be easier to deliver than injections and could even be self-administered.
Swaminathan said there were 129 different candidate vaccines that have got as far as clinical
trials — being tested on humans — while a further 194 are not yet that advanced in their
development and are still being worked on in laboratories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This covers the entire range of technologies,” she told a live interaction on WHO social
media channels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They’re still in development. I’m sure some of them will prove to be very safe and efficacious
and others may not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There could be advantages to some of the second generation vaccines\u2026 clearly if you have
an oral vaccine or an intra-nasal vaccine this is easier to deliver than an injectable.
“Ultimately we’ll be able to choose the ones that are most appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If not for Covid, we’re going to use these platforms for other infections in the future.”
Swaminathan explained the advantages of a vaccine being sprayed into the nose, as
happens in some countries with influenza vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If there’s a local immune response then it will take care of the virus before it even goes and
establishes itself in the lungs and starts causing a problem,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The WHO has only given emergency use authorisation to seven Covid-19 vaccines: those
created by Pfizer\/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm,
Sinovac and last week Bharat Biotech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“None of the vaccines are 100 percent. Nobody has ever claimed that the vaccines are going
to be 100 percent protective. But 90 percent is a wonderful amount of protection to have,
compared to zero,” Swaminathan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Till now, with the vaccines that we have approved, there has not been any signal which has
been so worrying that we need to say, well, we need to re-think this vaccine.”
More than 7.25 billion vaccine doses have been administered around the world, according to
an AFP count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said Tuesday she was looking forward to the
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