I was listening another episode of Planet Money podcast recently and was surprised that most vaccines are made using chicken eggs. There are several secret labs across the US that grow chickens in a great number to be able to get thousands of eggs in case of any virus outbeak.
To made a vaccine you need to have virus cells. And the most effective and cheepest way to produce virus is to infect egg with the virus. Afterwards, yo need to wait until the virus reproduce itself inside the eggshell and then prepare your vaccine in two ways.
In first case you need to kill the virus and purify the antigen. Then you can shot the vaccine into the body to start imune response inside patient’s body.
Other way is to weak the virus cells and pack them into the nasal spay as an alternative way to deliver cells into the body. The viruse cells in such vaccines are cold-adapted, and can produce themselves only at the cooler temperatures found within the nose. The viruses cannot infect the lungs or other areas where warmer temperatures exist.
So, do not underestimate the impact of chickens in tackling current coronavirus outbreak!