Top medic Luke O’Neill has said that a major invention from AstraZeneca could see a Covid-19 vaccine nasal spray available in pharmacies.
The vaccine rollout in Ireland got a major boost last week as we gave more jabs in one day than we had on any previous 24-hour period.
As a result, around 15% of the adult population have now received at least one vaccine dose.
But Trinity College Dublin immunologist Professor O'Neill has said that trials are currently being undertaken by AstraZeneca for a nasal spray COVID-19 vaccine.
Speaking to Pat Kenny on Newstalk this morning, he said: "It's just a spray up your nose, and they're embarking on a big trial now - mainly in the 18 to 40-year-olds.
"If they get there with that, that could be quite quick - as we spray many things: hay fever remedies are sprayed and so on, it's quite straight forward.
"You can buy the spray, or your GP might have it, or maybe even one day in a pharmacy.
"And then you spray it up your nose and your vaccinated... and what's good about that is that will protect your nose as well.
"And that decreases the risk of you being a transmitter.''
Furthermore, Professor O'Neill also said that the number of variants of the virus could also be smaller than first anticipated.
"There's more and more evidence that we may have all the variants that we need to worry about now," he explained.
"There's three main variants: they're the South African, Brazilian and UK.
"The revolutionary guys are saying 'the virus has had a good go at this'... and we may well have the main variants.
"There's more evidence now for this notion that it's finite, basically, [that] the number of variants that we might get will be finite".
