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(CNN) --
China has become the first country to greenlight an inhaled COVID-19 vaccine, paving the way for the potential use of a needle-free vaccine in the country, where suppressing the spread of COVID-19 -19 is still a priority.
The vaccine's maker, CanSino Biologics, said in a statement Sunday that China's drug regulator had approved the inhaled dose for emergency use as a booster shot.
The product, known as Convidecia Air, delivers a dose of vaccine through a puff of air from a nebulizer that is then inhaled through the mouth.
CanSino's Convidencia vaccine against covid-19, which is used by injection, is already in use in China and has been approved in a handful of other countries.
According to a database maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), CanSino's new product is one of two specifically "inhaled" vaccines that have reached clinical development, as several companies around the world investigate ways innovative ways to provide protection against covid-19 through the nose and mouth.
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The authorization of the inhaled dose comes as several Chinese cities impose large-scale covid lockdowns and mass testing in response to small-scale outbreaks.
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The country continues to adhere to a strict zero covid policy, even as the rest of the world learns to live with the virus.
More than 70 Chinese cities have been placed under full or partial covid-19 lockdown since the end of August, affecting more than 300 million people, according to a CNN tally.
A low vaccination rate among the elderly is a medical reason used by Chinese authorities to justify ongoing disease control measures.
Meanwhile, new coronavirus variants have affected the protection offered by first-generation vaccines around the world, including local vaccines from China that provide less robust antibody protection compared to mRNA vaccines developed in the West.
Booster and vaccination campaigns, and the development of next-generation products, are ongoing in China.
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The development of the inhaled vaccine
It is not clear what place the new inhaled vaccine will occupy in this picture.
CanSino warned in a company filing that some regulatory steps remain before the vaccine can hit the market, saying its product would face "fierce competition" domestically, where nine vaccines have received authorization so far.
In a press release, CanSino said that Convidecia Air "can induce strong humoral, cellular, and mucosal immunity."
The manufacturer provided no data to support those claims, but did refer to studies in the medical journal The Lancet.
In a small study published in August, CanSino researchers reported that in people who had received two injected doses of the CoronaVac vaccine, an inhaled vaccine booster increased antibody levels compared to a third injected dose of CoronaVac.
CoronaVac, a vaccine developed by Beijing-based Sinovac that is widely used in China and around the world, uses a different type of technology than Convidencia, so the inhaled dose provided a heterologous or mixed boost.
The study did not test whether the inhaled dose prevented people from becoming infected or prevented them from passing Covid to others.
Globally, drugmakers are racing to make next-generation vaccines that can improve protection against Covid, including those that use innovative delivery methods.
Clinical trials are underway to test more than a dozen aerosolized vaccines to see if they can create so-called mucosal immunity.
This increases certain antibodies in the nose and mouth, specifically with the goal of preventing an infection in the first place.
There is hope that these non-injected vaccines, which are given as drops, sprays or tablets in the mouth and nose, could also prevent the infection from spreading from person to person, something injected vaccines do not do very well. after the appearance of new variants of the virus.
CanSino's Convidencia vaccine is similar to vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and Oxford AstraZeneca.
It uses a harmless virus called adenovirus to carry instructions for converting covid spike proteins into cells so the body can create antibodies against them.
None of CanSino's products have been licensed for use in the United States, but the World Health Organization listed the injected version of Convidcia for emergency use earlier this year.
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