Novavax Says Covid Vaccine Shipments to Europe Have Started

(Bloomberg) -- Novavax Inc. has shipped the first doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to Europe, marking the drug company’s entry into a potentially large new market.

Chief Executive Officer Stanley Erck announced the shipments during a presentation on Monday at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. The company also said in a statement that it and its partner Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. had filed for an emergency-use authorization for the shot in South Africa.

The shipments to Europe are “a big milestone for the company,” Erck said in an interview on Monday with Bloomberg Television.  “There is a lot of pent-up demand for our vaccine.”

The company’s vaccine was authorized in Europe last month. The shot is also in use in several countries in Asia, including Indonesia, and it has also been granted emergency-use status by the World Health Organization. Novavax is now seeking clearance in the U.S., and Erck said the company expects feedback from regulators sometime in February. 

In the TV interview, Erck said the company was working on a vaccine that would combine its Covid shot with a flu vaccine in one inoculation. Novavax expects to get initial human data from a combination in a couple months, Erck said.

“It is becoming more and more clear that you are going to need to boost Covid,” Erck said, noting the optimal interval between Covid boosters isn’t clear yet. If the combination approach works, “that would be a great breakthrough so that everybody could get just one shot with the combination vaccine a year,” he said.

Manufacturing problems had earlier slowed Novavax’s entry into the global vaccine market. The company’s shares rose 5.1% at 2:28 p.m. in New York.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.