Could next year’s Covid jab be given as a painless patch?

SOME good news for people with trypanophobia — a fear of needles — who want to be protected against coronavirus.

A team at The University of Queensland are testing a skin patch that they’re hoping to use to deliver Covid-19 vaccines. It consists of a strip of plastic, just 1 cm square, covered with 5,000 tiny plastic spikes.

When coated with the Covid vaccine they can be pressed onto your arm with a single click from a springloaded applicator. This is not only painless but the vaccine doesn’t have to be stored at cold temperatures either. Also, when a vaccine is given this way the tiny needles puncture just the outer layer of the skin — this is called an intradermal injection and this can produce a much more powerful immune response than a vaccine delivered via a needle into muscle. That’s because your skin is packed full of immune cells, primed to respond powerfully to any foreign intruders.

Studies using flu vaccines have shown you only need to give a fifth of the normal dose to get the same effect as injecting into muscle. Despite these advantages, few vaccines are routinely administered with intradermal injections because you have to get the needle into just the right layer of skin (the dermis) and this normally requires trained medical staff.

But if a Covid vaccine could be given as a patch, it would be painless, which might encourage more vaccine refuseniks to come forward. It could be done without needing any expertise as the needles are designed to only reach the dermis. The patch could even be self-administered. This approach has only been tested on animals but trials on humans begin next year.