Dikhyaa Mohanty 
AstraZeneca’s intranasal Covid vaccination reduced virus concentrations and curbed transmission in two different SARS-CoV-2 animal models, representing the need for further investigation as an impending method of inoculating Covid-19 shots.
According to the reports in the previous studies in rhesus macaques, it was revealed that intramuscular vaccination with AstraZeneca Covid shot provided protection against pneumonia; it did not reduce shedding of SARS-CoV-2 from the upper respiratory tract.
In the new study, intranasal vaccination of rhesus macaques and hamsters resulted in reduced virus concentrations in nasal swabs and a reduction in viral loads in bronchoalveolar lavage and lower respiratory tract tissue.
Vincent J Munster, from the Laboratory of Virology at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases stated that the data presented supports the investigation of intranasal delivery of Covid-19 vaccines. With the roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines worldwide, it will be crucial to investigate whether the vaccines provide sterilising immunity, or whether vaccinated people are still susceptible to infection of the upper respiratory tract and onward transmission of the virus. The data presented here demonstrate SARS-CoV-2-specific mucosal immunity is possible after intranasal vaccination and results in a reduction in virus detection in nasal swabs in hamsters and macaques.
The team investigated whether intranasally administered ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AstraZeneca’s intranasal Covid vaccine) reduces detection of virus in nasal swabs after challenging vaccinated macaques and hamsters with SARS-CoV-2 carrying a D614G mutation (the original Covid variant) in the spike protein.
