The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is due to vote this week on the application for authorization in the European Union of the anti-Covid vaccine from the American company Novavax, which could become the fifth anti-Covid vaccine authorized in the ‘EU.
“Our Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use will hold an extraordinary meeting on Monday, December 20 to examine the request for the anti-Covid vaccine developed by Novavax. We will communicate the result of this scientific discussion, ”announced the European regulator on Twitter last Thursday.
The new serum, called Nuvaxovid, is a so-called “subunit” vaccine, made from proteins that trigger an immune response, without viruses. The technology is similar to that used in hepatitis B and pertussis vaccines, which are decades old and widely used around the world.
Novavax uses more conventional technology than those used for vaccines already authorized in the world, which, according to health experts, could reduce skepticism among the unvaccinated.
Assumed efficiency of 90.4%
In June, the American pharmaceutical giant presented the results of clinical trials on some 30,000 people in the United States and Mexico, which showed an efficacy of 90.4% against the disease and 100% against severe to moderate cases. .
The European Commission also announced in August that it had entered into a contract with Novavax for the advance purchase of 200 million doses of its vaccine once it has been approved by the EMA.
Last Friday, the WHO granted an emergency use authorization for the vaccine “Covavax” produced by the Indian company Serum Institute of India with the license from Novavax. The goal, “to immunize more people in low-income countries”.
A fifth vaccine?
Four vaccines are currently authorized by the EMA in the EU: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Pfizer and Moderna are messenger RNA vaccines, an innovative technology that injects strands of genetic instructions into the body that tell the patient’s cells what to make to fight the disease.
AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, for their part, use innovative viral vector technology: they take as a carrier a very common type of virus called adenovirus, which has been modified to transport genetic information in the body to fight Covid-19.