Cincinnati Children’s Hospital initiates a better COVID vaccine

Despite widespread vaccinations and boosters, the omicron variant of COVID-19 spread quickly this winter, which lead scientists to rethink their strategy on fighting future variants with a nasal spray.

Paul Spearman, an infectious-diseases physician, is leading the CyanVac trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and says the rationale for an intranasal vaccine hit home in a personal way when he got sick during the delta wave, despite being fully vaccinated.

“I felt, boy, you need something better in terms of transmission and preventing symptoms,” Spearman says. “You could shut down a spreading epidemic. You might also prevent further variants from developing and shut down spread. That would be ideal.”