3 things to know about Novavax, the new vaccine soon available in France

“It’s a welcome addition to the arsenal to protect Europeans”, welcomed the President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen in December, announcing the authorization of the anti-Covid vaccine from Novavax in the EU, with an anticipated contract with the American laboratory for 200 million doses. The Nuvaxovid vaccine, which received the green light from the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) on Friday, could be offered in France from the beginning of February, the Ministry of Health announced earlier. Based on a more traditional technology than messenger RNA vaccines, it could reduce the skepticism of some of the unvaccinated.

Neither viral vector vaccine (like those from AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson) nor messenger RNA (like Pfizer or Moderna), Nuvaxovid uses yet another technology: it is a “subunit” vaccine, also called “recombinant protein “. The principle is to inject into the body a protein which resembles the now famous “Spike protein” of the virus, to trigger the production of antibodies against the real S protein of the Coronavirus.

The process is already known, and used for example in vaccines against whooping cough or hepatitis-B. It is also this same technology that uses the vaccine that the French laboratory Sanofi is developing, and which could arrive on the market in 2022, after two postponements.

A definite advantage of the Novavax subunit vaccine: it can be stored between 2° and 8° Celsius, which will facilitate its transport and distribution. Messenger RNA vaccines require extremely low temperatures, which require freezers that most low-income countries do not have, on a large scale at least, – even if Pfizer recently relaxed the storage conditions for its vaccine. By arriving on the market late, the doses of Novavax are all the more likely to be in excess in developed countries, and could then be redistributed via the Covax system.

Last June, Novavax laboratories published the first conclusions of their phase 3 clinical trials, conducted with 30,000 people. On this basis, the firm assured that its vaccine protected “100% against moderate and severe forms” of the disease, and 90.4% overall”. But even more, Novavax announced an effectiveness of 93% against the “predominant variants”, even if at the date of this study, neither the Delta variant nor the Omicron were still part of it.

The World Health Organization urgently approved this vaccine from the firm Novavax in December, indicating that it was the tenth thus validated. The WHO recommends the vaccine for anyone over the age of 18, respecting an interval of at least three weeks between two doses.