gerd50501 t1_j278j7v wrote on December 30, 2022 at 3:40 AM

Reply to comment by enterpriseF-love in Is the BF.7 mutation of Omicron less severe than variants? by Active_Bedroom_5495

is the US omicron booster effective against BF.7 variant?

how deadly and how transmissible is the BF.7 strain compared to other strains? I think Delta was the deadliest right?

As far as inhaled vaccine? Has this gone through FDA testing in the US? Is it just as effective as a shot?

enterpriseF-love t1_j27njv7 wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:51 AM

Yep the bivalent (BA.5) booster will fare better against BF.7. The US has inhaled vaccines under development but those haven't gotten that far partly due to funding, research, or political reasons.

BF.7 is a bit more immune evasive + transmissible compared to BA.5 and shows reduced sensitivity to monoclonal antibodies likely due to an amino acid change at R346T.

alexander_sn t1_j2bd43d wrote on December 31, 2022 at 12:16 AM

The developer of the inhaled vaccine that was approved in September (CanSino Biologics) has not submitted an application seeking the U.S. FDA's authorization to date for their Convidecia Air vaccine and it doesn't look like they have announced an intention to do so. They have some clinical trials sponsored for the vaccine, but none appear to be registered to enroll participants in the U.S.

Some have expressed skepticism over the benefit that these kinds of vaccines could offer relative to currently available vaccines in the U.S., including recently in a viewpoint co-authored by the FDA's top-ranking vaccines official Peter Marks:

"It is also not at all clear from well-controlled clinical trials that administering existing vaccines by the intranasal route (as some countries have already even approved) will provide truly meaningful benefit over the existing generation of COVID-19 vaccines. Such limitations were recently illustrated by the disappointing results with a viral-vectored vaccine administered intranasally in an early-phase clinical trial."