Hopes Novavax will boost Australia’s vaccine rate

Authorities hope Australians who have been holding out from getting vaccinated against Covid-19 will now come forward after they approved the Novavax jab.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and Dr John Skerritt. Picture: NCA NewsWire Martin Ollman

Australia‘s medicine regulator, government and public health experts hope the green light of a new Covid-19 jab will get vaccine hesitant people over the line and boost the country’s protection against serious illness.

Joined by the Therapeutic Goods Administration chief John Skerritt, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced on Thursday the Novavax jab has been approved for use in Australia.

Mr Hunt said he hoped the approval of Novavax would encourage the last five per cent of Australians who are yet to be vaccinated to come forward.

“We have a first dose national vaccination rate of 95.2 per cent, and we know that some people have waited for this vaccine, and although we have encouraged everyone to proceed with that and we recognise that as a fact hopefully this will encourage those people in the less than last 5 per cent to come forward,“ he said.

Professor Skerritt said he was aware some people have been holding out to get the Novavax jab because it uses existing vaccine technology, unlike Pfizer and Moderna which use mRNA technology.

“There are some individuals … who have been waiting for Novavax and it’s great that is has finally been approved,” professor Skerritt said.

“There are some individuals and there’s even social media groups who have for whatever reason been worried about new technology,” he said.

“The technology on which the Novavax is made is an older technology, it uses a protein and so I would have had literally several hundred emails from individuals and groups who have said for whatever reason we would like to have a protein vaccine.”

He said he was not sure how many Australians felt this way, but said he hoped the latest vaccine would boost the country’s coverage towards 98 per cent.

Deakin University chair in epidemiology Catherine Bennett explained vaccine hesitant people may feel more comfortable receiving the Novavax jab because it is a more “traditional style” of vaccine that already contains proteins that mount an immune response to Covid-19 which have been developed in the lab.

“Messenger RNA starts a little in cell production line and the cell itself produces the protein.. then your immune system reacts,” she said.

“What Novavax does is it takes that step out of the body, it does it in the lab first. So you actually have the protein itself injected rather than the message to produce the protein.”

People who have been hesitant to get mRNA vaccines or AstraZeneca are likely to have been exposed to misinformation online, which could have fuelled their fear professor Bennett said.

“There could be people ... a lot more than we even realise who have been waiting on this,” she said.

“So it would be great to see this close that gap (in the country’s vaccine coverage).”

After the European Union, Australia is the second major regulator to approve the vaccine professor Skerritt said.

Two major clinical trials showed the vaccine had above 90 per cent efficacy against symptomatic infection and there were no strong signals of “adverse events”.

According to the latest department of Health data, more than 95 per cent of Australians aged 16 and over have received at least one dose of any Covid-19 vaccine. Ninety-two per cent are double vaccinated.

While it still needs the final tick of approval from the country’s immunisation advisory group, the Commonwealth has secured 51 million doses of Novavax.