Our Berlin bureau chief, Philip Oltermann, reports on the rollout of Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine in Germany:
Germany will offer its population a new protein-based Covid-19 vaccine comparable to conventional flu jabs this week, in the hope of swaying a sizeable minority that remains sceptical of the novel mRNA technology used in the most commonly used vaccines.
About 1.4m doses of the Nuvaxovid vaccine developed by the US biotech company Novavax are to arrive in Germany this week, the country’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, confirmed last Friday. A further 1m doses are to arrive the week after, with the German government’s total order for the year 2022 amounting to 34m doses.
Novavax’s product has until now only been used in Indonesia and the Philippines, but was permitted for use in the EU last December. It is still awaiting authorisation in the US, as some concerns about the company’s production capacity persist.
Unlike the novel mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna or viral vector made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, Nuvaxovid is a protein subunit vaccine. It contains a non-infectious component on the surface of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which induces a protective immune response when the body’s immune cells come into contact with it.
Novavax announced last Junethat its vaccine had proven more than 90% effective against symptomatic infections with the Alpha variant, in trials including nearly 30,000 volunteers in the US and Mexico.
The company says its product is similarly effective against the Delta and Omicron variants, especially after a booster shot administered six months after the second jab. Germany’s Paul Ehrlich Institute notes that the data proving the vaccine’s efficacy against more infectious variants remains limited.
Surveys in Germany suggest a considerable interest in the Novavax jab among the 19.8 million people in the country who have so far declined to take a jab against Covid-19. Out of 4,000 unvaccinated hospital workers surveyed in Berlin, 1,800 expressed an interest in the protein-based vaccine.
In the northern states of Lower Saxony, the health ministry said 6,000 people had put their name on a waiting list for Nuvaxovid by early February.
Some scientists question whether the new vaccine will prove a game changer in a country whose overall vaccination rate has been flatlining around 75% for months. Lars Korn, co-author of a current survey of anti-vaxxer attitudes conducted by the University of Erfurt, told public broadcaster ZDF that two-thirds of respondents would continue to completely reject any form of vaccination.
