Singapore may get non-mRNA Novavax Covid-19 vaccine before year-end

[SINGAPORE] Singapore has signed advanced purchase agreements with American biotechnology company Novavax to secure its protein-based Covid-19 vaccine, with supplies possibly arriving before the end of the year.

Singapore's Health Ministry (MOH) had signed the agreements with Novavax in January this year, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Thursday (June 24) at a virtual press confernce held by the multi-ministry task force on Covid-19.

He added that MOH has been looking for vaccines of good quality, which are safe and effective, to be part of the national vaccination programme, and noted that Novavax has recently showed encouraging results.

Currently only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which use the mRNA technology, are offered under the vaccination programme. These vaccines teach cells to make a protein that prompts an immune response.

Novavax, a protein-based vaccine, uses a laboratory-made version of the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein to stimulate an immune response.

Like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, it also requires two shots spaced apart.

Mr Ong said shipments of Novavax's vaccines will not be ready so soon as it is still undergoing phase 3 clinical trials. "In the meantime, please consider mRNA vaccines, they work very well," he added.

Novavax has been shown to be more than 90 per cent effective against a variety of Covid-19 variants, based on late-stage data from its clinical trial in the United States.

The study of nearly 30,000 volunteers in the US and Mexico puts Novavax on track to file for emergency authorisation in the US and elsewhere in the third quarter of the year, the company said on June 14.

The company added that its vaccine candidate was more than 93 per cent effective against the predominant variants of Covid-19 that have been of concern among scientists and public health officials.

Protein-based vaccines are a conventional approach that uses purified pieces of the virus to spur an immune response. Vaccines against whooping cough and shingles employ this approach.

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