China’s medicines regulator issued on Sunday emergency use authorization (EUA) for an inhaled Covid-19 vaccine, making China the first country in the world to do so and pave the way for the potential use of the needle-free product since suppressing the spread of Covid-19 remains a top priority in the country.
The EUA approves the inhaled dose of Convidecia Air, made by vaccine maker CanSino Biologics, for emergency use as a booster vaccine delivered through a puff of air from a nebulizer that is then inhaled by mouth.
CanSino claimed in a news release that inhaled Convidecia Air can induce strong humoral, cellular, and mucosal immunity without providing data to support those claims, though it referred to studies in The Lancet.
It also cautioned in a company filing that some regulatory steps remain before the inhaled Convidecia Air can go to market
China already uses CanSino’s injected Convidecia Covid-19 vaccine, which has also been approved in a handful of other countries.
While a number of companies worldwide research innovative ways to deliver Covid-19 protection via the nose and mouth, the World Health Organization’s database shows the new Convidecia Air is one of only two specifically “inhaled” jabs that had reached clinical phase development.
As the rest of the world learns to live with the virus, China continues to adhere to the stringent zero-Covid policy, and Convidecia Air’s authorization comes as large-scale Covid lockdowns and mass testing drives are being enforced in multiple Chinese cities in response to small-scale outbreaks.
Beijing is using the low vaccination rate among the elderly among the medical reasons to justify its ongoing disease control measures that have placed more than 70 Chinese cities under full or partial Covid lockdown since late August.
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