Which would you prefer, a needle vaccine in arm or a spray in your nose? While every one should get vaccines, not everyone likes sharp needles.
There’s something called trypanophobia, a.k.a. a fear of needles, and it can become quite troubling to get a shot. As seen at vaccination centers worldwide, a lot of people pass out and get panic attacks while getting a shot.
However, needles could soon be obsolete thanks to recent research from Mie University.
Tetsuya Nozaka of Mie University’s Graduate School of Infectious Disease Control and Medicine announced the development of a new COVID-19 vaccine. The additional redeeming factor of this vaccine is that it doesn’t require a needle to get into your body. The antibodies will be directly produced just from the spray to your nose.
The whole department has been working since the early March of the previous year. The vaccine will remain usable after six months of production. Professor Nozaka hopes that the vaccine will help with boosting immunity. He said that initial animal testing had shown positive results.
Even the development team remained surprised by how effective the vaccine actually is, and unlike other mainstream vaccines, the chances of fever are meager. However, not all aspects have been going well, as the professor faces a tough challenge in distributing the vaccine spray.
In an interview, the professor said that it would cost 10 billion yen (roughly US$9.1million) for the distribution of this vaccine. But we must think about how to spend that budget. “I would like to see this spray not only used in Japan, but around the world as soon as possible, especially in developing countries,” he said. He is hopeful that within two years, his creation will be in use.
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