Drug delivery
Down the hatch
Vaccination continues to be our best defence against the morbidity and mortality caused by Covid-19, but with the imperative to ‘boost’ the number of antibodies by giving multiple doses each year, the case for a simpler delivery method is growing. With multiple oral vaccines in clinical trials, it is worth asking how viable this delivery method is, both in terms of its mechanism of action and in the scheme of national vaccination strategies. Mae Losasso investigates the topic by gaining insight from Jim McManus, director of public health at Hertfordshire County Council, Professor Azeem Majeed, head of department of primary care and public health at Imperial College London, and Dr Sean Tucker, chief scientifi c offi cer of Vaxart.
t the time of writing, slightly more than two-thirds of the UK’s population are fully vaccinated. Opinion differs on exactly what percentage of the population needs to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, but if the statistics around measles are any barometer – according to the World Health Organisation, measles requires 95% of a population to be vaccinated – we are falling considerably short of the vaccine target for herd immunity against Covid-19, and the UK is doing better than most. Only 61.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of the vaccine; and that figure drops to only 10.6% of people in low-income countries. In Nigeria, less than 3% of the population
A 10
have been fully vaccinated. Globally, vaccination uptake is a problem; we are simply not reaching the numbers that we need to bring about an end to the pandemic. Those of us in the West who have been listening to the media, may be forgiven for assuming that this is the result of conspiracy theories and trumped-up anti-vaccine rhetoric, spreading like a parallel virus across the internet. Though misinformation has certainly played its part in vaccine hesitancy, there is more to this than simply rhetoric. As the director of public health at Hertfordshire County Council, Jim McManus explains, “the single thing to realise about improving vaccine uptake is that there is no single thing that will improve vaccine uptake”.
World Pharmaceutical Frontiers /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
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