China Creates Aerosolized Booster Shots for Mass Vaccination

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By Lars James Hamer

Shanghai became the first city in China to use the country’s aerosolized adenovirus type-5 vector-based COVID-19 vaccine (Ad5-nCoV) booster shot on Tuesday, Global Times reports.

The announcement was made via the Shanghai municipal government’s WeChat account, which stated the vaccination would be available for use from Wednesday, October 26, 2022.

Reservations are already open to all local adults who have already received two doses of China’s COVID-19 vaccine (Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech) or one shot of CanSino Biologics (CanSinoBIO)'s intramuscular Ad5-nCoV more than six months ago.

In their announcement, the Shanghai government stated that “Receiving a booster shot is an effective method to enhance the protection effectiveness and prolong the protection duration of vaccines,” as reported in Global Times.

Twenty-three million people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Shanghai and more than half of them have had a booster shot.

The aerosolized vaccine is jointly produced by CanSinoBIO and the Institute of Military Medicine under the Academy of Military Sciences and is the world’s first aerosolized COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccine is inhaled through a device resembling a sippy cup. To use it, people only need to bite the lip of the cup and inhale the gas and hold their breath for five seconds. The vaccine will then be inhaled into the respiratory tract and the lungs.

The National Health Commission, China states that almost 3.5 billion shots of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the country.

National media has also reported that more than 1.3 billion people (over 90% of the population) have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

However, Gao Fu, the former head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that people should get booster shots as the mutations have weakened previous vaccines' efficacy in preventing infection, disease and transmission.

Health experts have also said that they believe that China will develop booster shots specifically made to tackle the Omicron strain before relaxing pandemic restrictions.

[Image via Wikimedia]

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