Lifestyle Desk
Dec 28, 2022
Now that Bharat Biotech’s intranasal Covid vaccine — which is given as nose drops — has been approved by the Union Health Ministry as a booster dose, the question arises of whether it can be clubbed with an invasive vaccine dose that is jabbed into our muscles — like Covidshield and Covaxin — or if one should choose either one as a precautionary dose amid the recent surge in Covid-19 cases led by the Omicron sub-variant BF.7.
Dr A M Deshmukh, president of Microbiologist Society, in a previous interaction with indianexpress.com, had explained that a booster or precautionary dose is an “additional dose administered to a vaccinated population that has completed a primary vaccination series”. The objective of such a dose is to “restore vaccine effectiveness”, which is no longer sufficient with evolving Covid variants.
The latest development brings a needle-free booster option into the picture, about which Dr Anshu Punjabi, consultant-pulmonologist and sleep medicine expert at Fortis Hospital, Mulund had earlier told this outlet that an intranasal vaccine targets the virus present in the mucous in the nose, where the highest loads of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are also likely to be present.
“If the virus can be stopped from entering at this point, it will not be able to get into the lungs. If an effective mucosal immune response is generated, it would possibly prevent the coronavirus infection from the outset and more effectively reduce transmission of the virus,” he had said.
laborating further, Dr Pavithra Venkatagopalan, corona-virologist and Covid awareness specialist at Rotary Club of Madras NextGen, told indianexpress.com there is no need to go overboard with the vaccines. “People are like, ‘I can take the booster, and I can take the nasal vaccine.’ All of these are stimulating your immune system. Nothing is going to happen if you ‘over-take’ vaccines; you are not going to get extra protection by taking a jab along with a nasal vaccine.”
The doctor added that one needs to ensure they take any one vaccine consistently, once a year. “Even if you take the nasal vaccine, your body will see it as a booster [dose] only, because it has already had some other form of the coronavirus vaccine. You can get one, and you can mix and match every year. But please don’t be like, ‘This month I will take this vaccine and next month I will take that vaccine.’ That is a waste of vaccine resources,” she said.
Dr Pavithra also explained the efficacy of the vaccine, stating: “A nasal vaccine is administered through the nose; it is kind of like a nasoclear spray. The antigens, which are the immune response-causing particles, are absorbed by the nasal skin where the immune response forms. It is also an effective way of controlling the infection, because the amount of the virus that enters your circulatory system goes down; there is a strong stopping at the beginning itself.”