Why vaccines always come in a needle

Nobody really enjoys getting a needle, but getting the COVID-19 vaccine will be a struggle for those with trypanophobia – a fear of needles.

It led Tom Elliott to pose the question… why can’t vaccines be taken as a capsule, or forms other than a needle?

Nial Wheate, Associate Professor at the Sydney Pharmacy School at The University of Sydney, said there was a simple reason.

“It really comes down to the types of molecules that we have in there,” he explained on 3AW Drive.

“All vaccines have proteins or DNA and they’re very, very delicate – they don’t like heat, they don’t like sunlight and they don’t like the digestive juices of the stomach.

“If you try and manufacture it into a tablet, it’ll just get destroyed when you’re manufacturing it and if you swallow it as a tablet, our stomach will just rip it apart and it won’t work.”

Press PLAY below to hear him explain

Picture by Getty iStock