FDA authorizes COVID vaccine from Novavax

The Food and Drug Administration authorized Novavax’s COVID-19 shot for emergency use on Wednesday, adding a fourth vaccine to the U.S. arsenal.

The agency cleared the vaccine for adults aged 18 and older. The shot will be administered as a two-dose primary series, three weeks apart.

• Novavax’s vaccine could appeal to people who have been reluctant to receive one of the mRNA vaccines, as the protein-based shot was manufactured using a fundamentally different process.
• But about 77 percent of adults have already received two doses of an mRNA shot, so the potential market is small.

Novavax’s shot “provides another alternative for adults and adds another vaccine to the COVID-19 vaccine supply for the United States. The American public can trust that this vaccine, like all vaccines that are used in the United States, has undergone the FDA’s rigorous and comprehensive scientific and regulatory review,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s vaccine division.

Once the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signs off, vaccination can begin. The agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to meet on July 19.