The Los Angeles Post

FDA AUTHORIZES NOVAVAX COVID VACCINE FOR ADOLESCENTS

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday cleared Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in adolescents, paving the way to expand eligibility for the fourth shot available in the United States.

 

The two-dose regimen utilizes protein-based technology previously leveraged in vaccines to combat other viruses, offering an alternative for Americans skeptical of Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA technology.

 

Providers can begin administering the vaccine to people aged 12 through 17 after a sign off from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has already authorized the vaccine’s use for adults. The two doses are given three weeks apart.

 

The FDA granted emergency use for adolescents after the company said its trial of 2,247 adolescents showed a primary efficacy of 78 percent.

  • “Having more vaccine options for use in both adults and adolescents, like the Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted will hopefully help increase vaccination rates, particularly as we prepare for ongoing surges of COVID-19 with the start of fall and the back-to-school season,” Novavax President Stanley Erck said in a statement.

Novavax conducted the trial last year, when the delta variant was predominantly circulating in the United States. The White House has continued urging Americans to get vaccinated and boosted amid the spread of the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of omicron, but questions remain as to how the mutations could impact the vaccine’s efficacy.