Novavax’s COVID vaccine lastly wins FDA authorization to be used in unvaccinated

Empty vials of the Novavax Inc. Nuvaxovid COVID-19 vaccine arranged at the Tegel Vaccine Center in Berlin, Germany, on Monday, March 7, 2022.

Enlarge / Empty vials of the Novavax Inc. Nuvaxovid COVID-19 vaccine organized on the Tegel Vaccine Heart in Berlin, Germany, on Monday, March 7, 2022. (credit score: Getty | Bloomberg )

The US Meals and Drug Administration on Wednesday issued a long-awaited authorization for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine. It’s the fourth COVID-19 vaccine to realize authorization within the US, but it surely’s the primary to make use of a extra typical protein-subunit design.

For now, the two-dose vaccine is especially aimed on the roughly 72 million Individuals who’ve but to obtain one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA’s emergency use authorization solely permits for its use as a major sequence, not a booster for these already vaccinated. Although Novavax is anticipated to hunt booster authorization later, the corporate and the FDA hope that the vaccine’s conventional formulation will entice vaccination holdouts now, significantly as BA.5 sweeps the nation.

Some think about the vaccine’s protein-subunit design as a extra tried-and-true design relative to the newer mRNA-based platform used within the main COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Whereas mRNA-based vaccines made their public debut in the course of the pandemic, protein-subunit-based vaccines had been already in use towards varied illnesses, together with hepatitis B, flu, pertussis (whooping cough), and meningococcal infections.

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