India developing nasal vaccine for corona virus: What you need to know

Picture courtesy : NPR

Indian company ‘Bharat Biotech’ is developing an intranasal vaccine for coronavirus. The phase-1 trials are expected to begin next week in four cities: Chennai, Patna, Nagpur, and Hyderabad. The firm asked the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) permission for phase-1 and phase-2 trials for this intranasal vaccine. On Tuesday, permission for phase-1 was provided and the trials will be performed on 175 participants. According to reports, the recruitment of these 175 participants is underway. If the results are favorable, then this can be a big achievement in terms of saving billions of syringes and needles currently required for the current intramuscular vaccine available. This will also lead to a reduction in the cost of vaccination drives.