Evaluation result: uncertain.
Authoritative interpretation:
Virus vaccine is an active immune preparation for preventing infectious diseases by artificially attenuating, inactivating or genetically modifying the virus.
Inactivated vaccine means to cultivate the virus first and then inactivate it with heat or chemicals. In the production process, it is necessary to use virus susceptible cell lines to amplify the virus in large quantities and then inactivate the virus, which usually takes a long time.
Tobacco flu vaccine belongs to the latter. By means of genetic engineering, tobacco leaves were used as amplification carriers to introduce virus plasmids into tobacco plants, and refined virus-like particles were used as vaccines. COVID-19 is not used to infect tobacco leaves and make tobacco produce antibodies. Because conventional tobacco plant cells do not contain COVID-19 gene, they will not produce virus-specific proteins.
At the same time, it has not been proved that smoking can prevent COVID-19, because it is not tobacco itself that has antiviral effect.
However, at present, this view is only a possibility. Whether the vaccine produced by tobacco is successful or not must be verified by strict clinical trials.
The scientific rumor platform is compiled according to expert interviews and authorized to be released.
Audit Expert: Researcher, Institute of Viral Disease Prevention and Control, China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Zhang Yong.