Scientists want to create an ideal COVID-19 vaccine for the future — and it wouldn’t look too much like the one we’re using right now.
What scientists want from a COVID-19 vaccine
NPR reports that scientists want to create a safe and effective vaccine that would include a number of qualities that make it more ideal.
Deborah Fuller, a vaccine researcher at the University of Washington, told NPR the perfect COVID-19 vaccine would be “administered in a single shot, be room temperature stable, work in all demographics and, even pushed beyond that, ideally be self-administered.”
- That means you’d give yourself the single shot of the vaccine.
Researchers have begun to develop new vaccine ideas. Some of these ideas are already being tested on volunteer groups. And, in some cases, this means testing out new COVID-19 vaccine options that don’t require needles, according to NPR.
- “We wanted to develop a platform technology where we could easily give a vaccine, and obviously the easiest format to give would be a tablet,” Sean Tucker, chief scientific officer at Vaxart, told NPR.
What about COVID-19 vaccine pills?
There have been some suggestions of a COVID-19 vaccine pill coming to the United States. The drugmaker Oravax announced in March that it is developing a new COVID-19 vaccine pill, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
- “There is no guarantee of success, and even if it works it could be a year or more before it is authorized for use,” according to Insider.
Similarly, Pfizer said it has started the first phase of trials on a COVID-19 vaccine pill.
- According to The Hill, the new pill would be “a potent protease inhibitor, the same kind of technology used to treat HIV and hepatitis C. Protease inhibitors bind to a viral enzyme and prevent the virus from replicating in the cell.”