Australia’s medicines regulator has approved the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine for use in adults.
Nuvaxovid received provisional approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration on Thursday, making it the fourth vaccine to be included in Australia’s rollout and the country’s first approved protein-based Covid vaccine.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, said on Thursday he hoped Novavax’s approval would encourage vaccine-hesitant people – around 1 million adults that comprise less than 5% of the over-16 population – to get the jab.
“We have a first-dose national vaccination rate of 95.2%,” Hunt said. “Some people have waited for Novavax and although we’ve encouraged everyone to proceed, we recognise that that’s a fact.”
How does the Novavax jab differ from other Covid-19 vaccines and will it make a difference to vaccination rates?
What is Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine?
The Novavax jab is a protein subunit vaccine. It contains a non-infectious component on the surface of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which induces a protective immune response when the body’s immune cells come into contact with it.
“The technology on which Novavax is made is an older technology,” John Skerritt, head of the TGA, said on Thursday.
“There are some individuals and there’s even social media groups who have, for whatever reason, been worried about new technology, even though the foundational technology for messenger RNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, and for adenovirus vaccines, such as AstraZeneca, have been around for some years,” he said.
Nuvaxovid is produced by genetic engineering and is grown in moth cells. “It’s not exactly something that you’re directly taking from nature,” Skerritt said in an interview with the ABC.
Silvia Taylor, a senior vice-president at Novavax, described the vaccine as using a “tried and true technology platform”. Other protein subunit viruses vaccines include one for hepatitis B.
Will it make a difference to vaccination rates?
Taylor said on Friday that Novavax believed its Covid vaccine was “a great choice” for “those who may be vaccine hesitant or looking for additional options”.
Skerritt said Novavax provided “further choice” to people who had not yet received a Covid-19 vaccination. “I would have had literally several hundred emails and groups who’ve said for whatever reason, ‘we’d like to have a protein vaccine’.
“Our dream is that we might turn our 95% [vaccination rate] up to 97 or 98% in this country.”
Assoc Prof Holly Seale, an infectious disease social scientist at the University of New South Wales, said it was difficult to know what proportion of the unvaccinated population was holding out for Novavax.
“Having this fourth vaccine in our repertoire – I’m happy to be wrong [but] I’m not sure if it’s going to make a big dent in the numbers,” she said.
Seale, who has interviewed Covid vaccine refusers as part of her research, said a small group of people were waiting for Novavax based on “sentiment that this vaccine represents something more traditional or aligned with vaccines that have been previously used in Australia”.
It may be founded on misunderstandings about the vaccine, such as the belief that Novavax is “more natural” than mRNA vaccines, she said.
“We certainly do want to encourage people who have been waiting to get the vaccine,” she said. “We also need to make sure that people aren’t going about with misunderstandings and have been holding out for a vaccine when really they could be receiving one of the other vaccines … that are already out there.”
When will Novavax be available?
The TGA’s approval is for a primary course – two doses – of the Novavax vaccine in people aged 18 and over.
Subject to consideration by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the vaccine will be available in the coming weeks, Hunt said on Thursday.
The federal government announced an advanced purchase agreement last January for 51m doses of the vaccine, with the first shipment expected to arrive in the country in the next month.
