An influential scientific panel is meeting Tuesday to discuss who should receive a newly authorized COVID-19 vaccine from Novavax, a Maryland drug company that hopes its shot will appeal to Americans who have now Vaccination has been refused till date.
The independent experts, who advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its vaccine policies, will convene at 10 a.m. Eastern (you can watch the meeting here). They are scheduled to vote to support Novavax’s latecomer vaccine, which is expected to play a limited role in the country’s vaccination campaign, at least initially. The Food and Drug Administration last week authorized it as the primary vaccination for adults, but has not yet considered it for a booster shot.
The Biden administration said last week that it would buy 3.2 million doses of the two-shot vaccine, enough to completely vaccinate 1.6 million people in the United States. The vaccine is not yet available in pharmacies and other clinics that administer the shots in the United States. Announcing the purchase, the government said Novavax was expected to finish its quality testing soon, a necessary step before the dosage is released.
If the CDC panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, votes to support the use of the vaccine, the next step will be the CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Valensky to accept its recommendations, which is usually swift.
The vaccine was found to be highly protective against infection and serious illness from the coronavirus in clinical trials, but they were conducted before the emergence of the Omicron variant, which rapidly reduced the effectiveness of other authorized vaccines in preventing infection. have make.
At the meeting Tuesday, a CDC official will review data from a clinical trial that has linked the vaccine to an elevated but small risk of developing forms of inflammation of the heart known as myocarditis and pericarditis. In a review of Novavax’s data, FDA scientists identified six cases of the conditions in nearly 40,000 trial volunteers.
The Novavax vaccine works differently from the three previously authorized COVID vaccines in the United States. It stimulates the immune response with nanoparticles made of proteins from the surface of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Similar protein-based vaccines have been used globally for decades.
Novavax officials argue that this tried-and-true technology will make the vaccine more acceptable to those concerned with the messenger RNA technology used in their vaccines by Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna, the immunization giant in the United States. responsible for the majority.
(This story has not been edited by seemayo staff and is published from a rss feed)