Expert Council Approves New COVID-19 Vaccine

Consultants for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend the use of Novavax’s NVAX.O COVID-19 vaccine for persons 18 years of age and older.

The vaccine was approved by the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). CDC Director Rochelle Walenski still has to sign off on the recommendations before the vaccine is available in the United States, so the vaccine may not be immediately ready for distribution.

The government has secured 3.2 million doses of Novavax vaccine, but is waiting for the company to complete quality testing before it is released. Novovax hopes to complete testing in the next few weeks.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the vaccine for primary vaccination. This makes it the fourth COVID vaccine approved for use among adults in the United States.

Novavax hopes that its protein-based vaccine will gain wider acceptance among skeptics because it uses older technology than mRNA-based vaccines. Protein-based vaccines have been used for decades to fight diseases such as hepatitis B and influenza.

More than 77% of adults in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated with vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech or Johnson & Johnson.