Nearly four years later, COVID is still surging, constantly mutating to create new variants that evade our immunity from prior infections and the latest vaccines. And if the immediate and long-term harm from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19 disease) wasn’t enough to worry about, the deadly H5N1 avian flu variant is circulating in the U.S.
Now, a new study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis says a different method of immunization can do more to stop the virus than vaccine injections with syringes. In their study with hamsters, vaccines that were sprayed or dropped into the nasal passages reduced the infected rodent’s respiratory viral load to help prevent secondary airborne transmission and infection of other hamsters.
“To prevent transmission, you need to keep the amount of virus in the upper airways low,” senior author Jacco Boon, a professor of medicine, molecular microbiology and pathology and immunology, said in a news release. “The less virus that is there to begin with, the less likely you are to infect someone else if you cough or sneeze or even just breathe on them. This study shows that mucosal vaccines are superior to injected vaccines in terms of limiting viral replication in the upper airways and preventing spread to the next individual. In an epidemic or pandemic situation, this is the kind of vaccine you’re going to want.”
