It's Wednesday, June eight. I'm Oscar Ramrrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. Vaccine experts advising the FDA have endorsed a new COVID vaccine made by Novavax, saying that the shots benefits outweigh any risk associated with it. The vaccine will still need full approval before coming on the market, but it will be the first one available using more traditional protein based technology.
Liz s Lee White, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joins for what to know about its effectiveness and concerns. Thanks for joining us, Liz, Thanks for having me. Well, let's talk about some interesting developments on the covid front. We could be getting another vaccine on the market. This
one's by Novavax. There's a few little differences on this one, but what we just saw was vaccine experts advising the FDA basically endorsing this, saying that the benefits of this new vaccine outweigh some of the risks that have been associated with it so far. So tell us about what was going on with the FDA, and then we'll get into some details about this particular vaccine. As I mentioned, it's a little different from the ones that we have
so far right now, Yeah, that's right. The f d A has an outside advisory group that looks at every you know, big vaccine like this, and the advisors today said, vote of twenty one to zero with one abstention, that they thought the vaccine safety profile looked good and they thought the effectiveness. The FDA review said that the vaccine was effective against COVID nineteen. So now there will be if the FDA itself and CDC sign off, another option
on the table for people looking to get vaccinated. Now, this vaccine has also been in development for quite some time, but there was a lot of manufacturing related delays things like that that kind of kept it off the table a little bit longer. But this shot specifically, you know, the two main vaccines that we're using right now are
the one by Fiser and the one by Maderna. Their m RNA vaccines have relatively newer technology on this side of things and is a more traditional protein based vaccine technology.
Tell us a little bit about that. That's right. The platform that this vaccine uses is the same type that is used by the shingles vaccine or hepatitis d vaccine UM and it's been around since the around the nineteen seventies, and so you know, there's the thought that there are some folks out there who are more hesitant to get the relatively new m R and a technology who might be um you know, have been waiting around for novavax
to come onto the scene. It works in a different way. Basically, instead of provoking the body to make its own coronavirus spike protein version, which then stimulates the NEN system, the protein based vaccine sends a bit like an own its own version of a coronavirus book by protein to the body, which stimulates the immune response. Yeah, and that's the hope, right. I guess there's a lot of people that could be allergic to some of the other vaccines too, and this
could be an option for them too. Obviously, it's really just to provide more options on the on the table for all of this. We have about of the population that's fully vaccinated, which is pretty good. A lot of other people have already been infected with it too, so they have some of that natural immunity and those natural antibodies. So on that side of things, we're doing pretty good. But you're right, the big question would be will this
convince others that have been hesitant to take it so far? Now, there were some cases of heart inflammation, some of the things that we heard associated with other vaccines that were also mixed in with this NOA vax one. So what
did we hear on that front? Right? The FDA pointed to six what it called concerning cases of myocarditis or paracarditis cases that they found there was some reason to suggest that there may be some causality there with the vaccine, since that they were all, you know, within a short period of time after vaccination, and they were in young men,
that kind of thing. So the FDA kind of highlighted that to advisers and it's briefing documents and said, you know, we didn't see any of these signals with the mRNA vaccines ahead of time. We saw them after authorization when they were on the market and a ton of people are using them. So they talked about that today and they kind of said, well, you know, it's possible that as we see more people take novavax the rates will be pretty much the same as that the mRNA vaccines.
And then also just a scientists, they really wanted to see more information on why this risk was coming about. Is it something about the spike routine, about COVID itself, or is there something to do with the platforms of the vaccine. That's still an unknown. What's important I think for people who just tune in occasionally to know it's it's still really rare to have the myocard itist events
happen calling vaccination. And most of the cases have totally resolved and like everyone recovered, h I mean six cases, I mean out of it's got to be out of the thousands right out of their from their clinical trials. Yeah, as you mentioned little cases, but that's an interesting notion. You know, who knows if it's the spike protein that's
causing this heart inflammation. As we know throughout going through the pandemic, you know a lot of people that it affects everybody in different ways, but inflammation is one of those key things that really throws people's bodies for a loop. So that'd be interesting to see if they ever do find what that correlation could be. And you know, just to end on this right, some of the people that you did speak to for this, you know they did say still say, hey, you know, I'm glad this new
one is coming up. Like the quote from the person who spoke to they said, you know, this is the first version of this vaccine, but to me, this is kind of the second version of this traditional technology. We've had some other stuff on the market. Now maybe I could be ready. So the hope is that's something new coming on board could spur some other people to still get vaccinated. Yeah, yeah, I've seen. I've gotten even more emails from readers saying the same thing since my story
came out this morning. So we'll be interesting. There's not really good data on how many of those people are out there, but we'll see. All right, we'll see and we'll track this a long as it if it eventually gets approved. Liz s Lee White, reporter at the Wall Street Journal, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramrrors and this has been
reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.