As well as vaccines being ingested through the nose, another company, Vaxart, is working on a vaccine pill, one which could be taken like any other.
The vaccine showed promising results in a trial conducted in July and uses an adenovirus to deliver instructions for making the Covid spike protein in the gut; this production causes the release of antibodies to fight the virus.
In the small scale trial, almost 50 percent of volunteers showed raised levels of antibodies in saliva and nasal samples than those who had previously been infected with Covid. And the antibodies lasted for around six months. A phase two trial of the vaccine pill, featuring around 900 participants, is currently underway.
What about future variants? How do we protect against those?
Currently, most vaccines are reactive, they’re responding to variants currently in circulation. The ultimate goal would be to have a vaccine which could be injected now and respond to variants in the future.