Yeah, they are probably referring to the nasal vaccines. They are working on them, and showing some progress, but it's been traditionally hard to pull off and I haven't heard of a timeline for their availability. If we get vaccines that provide mucosal immunity it will help a lot, from what I understand it would head off the virus before it enters the bloodstream and drastically lower transmission rates.
No. Like sterilizing immunity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9595357/
sterilizing immunity means you wouldn't become infected at all. The current vaccines reduce the chance of infection, but not by very much. Their primary benefit is reducing the risk of hospitalization and death.
Thank you! I knew I had it wrong but couldn't think what else it could be
Yeah, I'd never heard the term before. I thought all vaccines made you immune from infection before Covid.
I thought they reduced likelihood of both infection and serious illness
PLOS keeps a blog that updates at the end of every month that’s tracking the development of several types of vaccine, sterilizing among them. Don’t mind the bad cartoons. Here’s a link:
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/
