By Mrinalika Roy
(Reuters) -Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday voted unanimously to recommend use of Novavax Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine for individuals aged 18 and above.
The shot has been endorsed by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). CDC Director Rochelle Walensky still needs to sign off on the recommendations before the vaccine can be made available in the United States, and the shot may not be immediately ready for rollout.
The U.S. government has secured 3.2 million Novavax vaccine doses, but is waiting for the company to finish quality testing before they can be released. Novovax hopes to finish testing in the next few weeks.
The vaccine was authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week as a two-dose primary vaccination series, becoming the fourth COVID shot to be authorized for use in adults in the United States.
Novavax hopes its protein-based shot can reach wider acceptance among vaccine skeptics, because it uses an older technology than the messenger RNA vaccines. Protein-based vaccines have been used for decades to combat diseases including hepatitis B and influenza.
More than 77% of U.S. adults have been fully vaccinated with shots from Moderna Inc, Pfizer-BioNTech, or Johnson & Johnson.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Michael Erman in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)
