Coronavirus: FDA authorizes Novavax vaccine as booster shot

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the COVID-19 shot developed by Novavax as a first booster dose for adults at least six months after completion of a primary vaccination series.

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The vaccines are authorized for people aged 18 and older who have completed primary vaccination against COVID-19 and for whom a bivalent booster is not available or clinically appropriate. They are also authorized for adults who would not otherwise receive a booster vaccine dose.

“According to (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) data, almost 50 percent of adults who received their primary series have yet to receive their first booster dose,” Stanley Erck, president and CEO of Novavax, said Wednesday in a statement. “Offering another vaccine choice may help increase COVID-19 booster vaccination rates for these adults.”

As of last week, nearly 80% of the U.S. population has gotten at least one dose of any of the available COVID-19 vaccines, according to the CDC. Just over 68% of Americans have been fully vaccinated, and 49% of those who have been fully vaccinated have gotten at least one booster shot.

The original vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech has been the most widely used, with 372.4 million doses administered nationwide, according to CDC data. The original Moderna vaccine has accounted for 235.7 million shots, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been administered 18.9 million times. About 35,300 Novavax vaccines have been administered since the vaccine was authorized for emergency use in July.

The CDC recommends that people aged five and older receive a dose of the updated booster vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. The updated boosters target both the original virus strain and two prominent subvariants of the omicron variant. Officials say that the booster dose should be administered at least two months after a person got their final primary series vaccine dose or their last booster of the original shots.

Since the start of the pandemic, officials have confirmed more than 97 million COVID-19 infections and reported over 1 million deaths nationwide, according to numbers compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 626 million COVID-19 cases have been reported worldwide, resulting in 6.5 million deaths, according to the university.

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