LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The newest addition to the COVID-19 vaccine toolbox, the Novavax vaccine, is now available in Michigan for people ages 18 and older.
It is a two dose vaccine administered in vaccinations that are separated by three to eight weeks.
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This vaccine, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, does not use mRNA technology.
Instead, it uses spike proteins of the virus that causes COVID-19 along with something called an adjuvant to help a person’s immune system respond to the virus in the future.
An adjuvant is a drug or other substance (or combination) used to increase the efficacy of other drugs.
This Novavax vaccine teaches an immune system how to respond to the spike protein of an active virus in the future and this type of vaccine has been used for decades.
The CDC reports that when a person is given the vaccine, their immune system recognizes that these proteins don’t belong there and the adjuvant helps the immune system produce antibodies and activates other immune cells to fight off what is thought to be an infection.
The clinical trials showed this vaccine to be 90% effective in preventing mild, moderate or severe COVID-19, but had a lesser degree of effectiveness in people aged 65 and older with only 79% effectiveness. The trials were done before the Delta and Omicron variants came on the scene and boosters haven’t been authorized. The most common
side effects for the Novavax vaccine include fatigue, muscle pain, headache, joint pain, nausea and fever.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology which uses genetically engineered mRNA to teach cells how to make a protein or pieces of proteins which trigger an immune response. This technology hadn’t been used before in humans before the COVID-19 vaccines were made available.
It is thought by some that this new vaccine might be an answer to getting more military members vaccinated – those who earlier objected to the vaccines on religious grounds, citing their connection to abortion. The makers of the Novavax vaccines say that they did not use any cell lines or tissue derived from human fetuses in the development of
their vaccines whereas the Associated Press reported in the past that “Laboratorygrown cell lines descended from fetuses that were aborted decades ago were used in some early-stage testing of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and to grow viruses used to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.”
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